Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
AIMEE BENDERLanguage is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
AIMEE BENDERYou try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground.
AIMEE BENDERNot getting bored of my own story and/or character is one of the main struggles.
AIMEE BENDERLarge meadows are lovely for picnics and romping, but they are for the lighter feelings. Meadows do not make me want to write.
AIMEE BENDERI 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 BENDERI want to be violated by insight.
AIMEE BENDERThe 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 BENDERShe is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep. My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.
AIMEE BENDERListen. 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 BENDERI 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 BENDERI like birthday cake. It’s so symbolic. It’s a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just ‘Happy birthday!’ because it’s this emblem of childhood and a happy day.
AIMEE BENDERGlen Hirshberg’s stories are haunting, absolutely, but not only because of the content.
AIMEE BENDERI am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son.
AIMEE BENDERThat’s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person’s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.
AIMEE BENDERBut what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think?
AIMEE BENDERAs 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