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It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

Aimee Bender

I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.
AIMEE BENDER

Expand Fist List Lung Paper Release Taken
I watched as she added a question mark at the end. Arc, line, space, dot.
AIMEE BENDER

Add Dot Line Question Space Watch
I don’t think so, I don’t agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.
AIMEE BENDER

Agree Far Hope Said Think Unbearable
and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it’s giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.
AIMEE BENDER

Bone Eye Four Giving Hair Lose Number Wine Wise
It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we’d read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.
AIMEE BENDER

Code Daughter Details exchange Father Language Read
It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things.
AIMEE BENDER

Happen Reveal Seem Spring
When the light at Vernon turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.
AIMEE BENDER

Ghost Grab Hand Light Self Step Street
I am not happy, help me — like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message.
AIMEE BENDER

Bottle Eater Esch Happy Help Meal Message Sent
That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.
AIMEE BENDER

Actually Admit Humble might Mother Seem She
When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It’s nourishing; it’s rejuvenating.
AIMEE BENDER

Beautiful Body Feel Good Interesting Language Nourish Treat
We’re all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there’s too much thought and not enough heart.
AIMEE BENDER

Bigger Brain Dry Heart Smart Up World
I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me,
AIMEE BENDER

Anything Ate Bottle Help Likely Meal Message Same Tell
Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can’t fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows.
AIMEE BENDER

Blow Close Desire Door Large Listen Need Run Sky Space Window
That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother’s palm and fingertips.
AIMEE BENDER

Air Careful Concentrate Detail Intimate Mother Palm Same Time
If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.
AIMEE BENDER

Break Clean Cry Everything Happen Lose Normal Order Parent Progressive Walk
The stories themselves haunt, they stick around, they linger, inhabiting a little corner of the reader’s brain and resurfacing to evoke mystery or sadness or longing.
AIMEE BENDER

Around Brain Corner Evoke Inhabiting Mystery Reader Resurfacing Sad Stick Story
As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.
AIMEE BENDER

Bush Cold Desire Draft Heat House Involve Joke Laugh Make Something Soon Window
Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn’t appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.
AIMEE BENDER

Appreciate Flaw Kid Later Life Mess Parent Seem Strong
I peeled the skin off a grape in slippery little triangles, and I understood then that I would be undressing every item of food I could because my clothes would be staying on.
AIMEE BENDER

Clothes Dating Grape Item Peel Skin Slippery Stay Triangle Understood Undressing
With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.
AIMEE BENDER

Apartment Building Dark Hand Look Love Peer Room Rush Streetside Window
It’s a pleasure to dive into Hirshberg’s storytelling skills in American Morons.
AIMEE BENDER

Country Dive Moron Pleasure Skill Story Telling
Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
AIMEE BENDER

Built Character Language Out Plot Ticket
Large meadows are lovely for picnics and romping, but they are for the lighter feelings. Meadows do not make me want to write.
AIMEE BENDER

Feeling Lighter Lovely Meadow Picnic Romp Writing
My lover is experiencing reverse evolution.
AIMEE BENDER

Evolution Experience Lover Reverse
My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.” – Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)
AIMEE BENDER

Band Gene Inside Love Rope Rubber Story
We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.
AIMEE BENDER

Drop Hand Hit Sidewalk Street Wish World
The writing I tend to think of as ‘good’ is good because it’s mysterious.
AIMEE BENDER

Good Mysterious Tent Thinking Writing

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

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Popular Authors

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Aimee Bender Quotes