Aimee Bender Quotes

The world can ask you to participate, but it's a day-today decision if you want to agree to that proposal.

You can't predict the outcome. You can't raise a child and then tell them what to think.

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[...]when he closed his eyes, the torrent of longing waiting inside was so thick he thought he might drown in it.

I 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.

I think it's good to smile at everybody so that everyone knows you love everyone. It's good for human pacifism.

There are students that are scattered, who need to see something through to the finish, but I would say there are possibly more who do not entertain the leaps of the mind that need to be nurtured, and...

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

At lunch you order steamed vegetables because you're remembering that you have a heart too. You feel humbled by your heart, it works so hard. You want to thank it. You give your heart a little pat

Joseph would reach out to me occasionally, the same way the desert blooms a flower every now and then. You get so used to the subtleties of beige and Brown, and then a sunshine-yellow poppy bursts fro...

Nothing...They're from nothing,' he said. 'They came in the book...I found the book and inside were these flowers...They were in the book when I bought it... I bought it used...Because they meant some...

It's unsettling to meet people who don't eat apples.

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

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

It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand...

Now she and the widow had something in common, though loss did not pass from one person to another like a baton. It just formed a bigger and bigger pool of carriers. And she thought, scratching the co...

In other words, don't be reductive. Often, writers will rush to an ending that completes, or sums up, or reduces their story as opposed to moving to a place where it goes to something they may not und...

She looked over my shoulder once while I was texting, which was already annoying, and when I wrote lol she made a very clear point to me about how I was silent and not laughing out loud, not at all. I...

I asked them: Does it hurt? And the scar people nodded, yes. But it felt somehow wonderful, they said. For one long second, it felt like the world was holding them close.

Mom’s smiles were so full of feeling that people leaned back a little when she greeted them. It was hard to know just how much was being offered.

When I crossed the street, according to my mother, I still had to hold someone’s hand. At ten, I would be able to cross streets unhanded. I’d held on to Joseph’s many times before, for many years, but...