Glen Hirshberg’s stories are haunting, absolutely, but not only because of the content.
AIMEE BENDERWith 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.
More Aimee Bender Quotes
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I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son.
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My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.
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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.
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I give boring people something to discuss over corn.
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Large meadows are lovely for picnics and romping, but they are for the lighter feelings. Meadows do not make me want to write.
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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.
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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.
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There’s a gift in your lap and it’s beautifully wrapped and it’s not your birthday.
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I don’t think so, I don’t agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.
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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.
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You feel wonderful, you feel like somebody knows you’re alive, you feel fear because it could be a bomb, because you think you’re that important.
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When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It’s nourishing; it’s rejuvenating.
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It’s a pleasure to dive into Hirshberg’s storytelling skills in American Morons.
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And the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?
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This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.
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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.
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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.
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It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.
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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.
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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.
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Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
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I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.
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I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me,
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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.
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Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn’t love me – I felt the wash of her love every day.
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That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother’s palm and fingertips.
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