That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.
AIMEE BENDERLanguage is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
More Aimee Bender Quotes
-
-
I watched as she added a question mark at the end. Arc, line, space, dot.
AIMEE BENDER -
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 -
The writing I tend to think of as ‘good’ is good because it’s mysterious.
AIMEE BENDER -
Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.
AIMEE BENDER -
I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.
AIMEE BENDER -
Glen Hirshberg’s stories are haunting, absolutely, but not only because of the content.
AIMEE BENDER -
Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn’t love me – I felt the wash of her love every day.
AIMEE BENDER -
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 -
It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It’s the mathematical logic of being alive.
AIMEE BENDER -
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 -
But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.
AIMEE BENDER -
Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
AIMEE BENDER -
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 -
That’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 BENDER -
I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me,
AIMEE BENDER -
The wine glasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.
AIMEE BENDER -
Before she knew it was candles, did she think she’d done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips.
AIMEE BENDER -
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 -
While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave.
AIMEE BENDER -
Pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.
AIMEE BENDER -
Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.
AIMEE BENDER -
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 -
But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.
AIMEE BENDER -
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 -
She 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 BENDER -
I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.
AIMEE BENDER