“ I bit into the chocolate chip. Slowed myself down.By then, almost a week in, I could sort through the assault of layers a little more quickly. The chocolate chips were from a factory, so they had that… Aimee Bender
“ And, sure, fine, I do check my phone about every two minutes, but so do a lot of people, and it's better than smoking, that's what I say. It's the new, lung-safe cigarette. Aimee Bender
“ In the evenings, my father and I ate dinner quietly in front of the TV together. Wednesday night, Thursday. Frozen dinners I'd picked out at the grocery store, greatest hits by my favorite factories.… Aimee Bender
“ She too looked like a regular lady, living in the world- didn't seem particularly with it or excitable or stellar. But that chicken, bathed in thyme and butter- I hadn't ever tasted a chicken that had… Aimee Bender
“ No one needed to say it, but the room overflowed with that sort of blessing. The combination of loss and abundance. The abundance that has no guilt. The loss that has no fix. The simple tiredness that… Aimee Bender
“ I loved my dish towel. This one was two-toned, and had, on one side, stitchings of fat purple roses on a lavender background, and on the other side, fat lavender roses on a purple background. Which si… Aimee Bender
“ The sensor did not seem to be restricted to my mother's food, and there was so much to sort through, a torrent of information, but with George there, sitting in the fading warmth of the filtered after… Aimee Bender
“ My favorite of all was still the place on Vermont, the French cafe, La Lyonnaise, that had given me the best onion soup on that night with George and my father. The two owners hailed from France, from… Aimee Bender
“ My birthday is in March, and that year it fell during an especially bright spring week, vivid and clear in the narrow residential streets where we lived just a handful of blocks south of Sunset. The n… 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
“ Does it work with sandwiches? he asked.I didn't move. He handed it over. George was watching with a kind of neutral curiosity, and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, so I just unwrapped it and t… Aimee Bender
“ Sherrie would be there, and the last time I’d seen her at a social event she burst into tears when she saw me and ran out of the room. You’re upset, I’d yelled after her, meanly. Aimee Bender
“ My birthday cake was her latest project because it was not from a mix but instead built from scratch- the flour, the baking soda, lemon-flavored because at eight that had been my request; I had develo… Aimee Bender
“ Most teenage girls don't give old people the time of day which is sad because all old people do all the time is think about how nice it was to be a teenager so long ago. Aimee Bender
“ I started in our neighborhood, buying a pastrami burrito at Oki Dog and a deluxe gardenburger at Astro Burger and matzoh-ball soup at Greenblatt's and some greasy egg rolls at the Formosa. In part fun… Aimee Bender
“ It is these empty spaces you have to watch out for, as they flood up with feeling before you even realize what's happened. Aimee Bender
“ 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… Aimee Bender
“ My mouth- always so active, alert- could now generally identify forty of fifty states in the produce or meat I ate. I had taken to tracking those more distant elements on my plate, and each night, at… Aimee Bender
“ George Malcolm: half white, half black, with messy tousled hair, rumpled and tugged between kind of curly and extremely curly. Once, a year or so before, he'd been at our house and he'd pulled out a l… Aimee Bender
