Aimee Bender Quotes

I want to be violated by insight.

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.

It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.

As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.

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.

You're the perfect girl', he said, rubbing his chin. 'You expect nothing.

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.

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.

I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q...

I admired that stride; it was like he folded space in two with it.

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. 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.

My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.

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.

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.

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. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.

My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen." — Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)

You can ruin anything if you focus at it.

…kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.

It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things.

Not getting bored of my own story and/or character is one of the main struggles I have had with novel writing, and I have put to bed big chunks of work that just didn't sustain my interest.

I don't think so, I don't agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.

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.

But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.

Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.

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