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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.

Aimee Bender

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Aimee Bender
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: June 28
Novelist
Writer
the United States of America
Daughter
Read
Language
Codes
Understand
Exchanging
Father
Manual
Another
Manuals
Best
Translated
Like
Code

More quotes by Aimee Bender

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Glen Hirshberg's stories are haunting, absolutely, but not only because of the content -- the stories themselves haunt, they stick around, they linger, inhabiting a little corner of the reader's brain and resurfacing to evoke mystery or sadness or longing. It's a pleasure to dive into Hirshberg's storytelling skills in American Morons.
Aimee Bender
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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.
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I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me, 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.
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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.
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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.
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You're the perfect girl', he said, rubbing his chin. 'You expect nothing.
Aimee Bender
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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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While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.
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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.
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My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen. — Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)
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To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.
Aimee Bender
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…kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.
Aimee Bender
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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.
Aimee Bender
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When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It's nourishing it's rejuvenating.
Aimee Bender
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I am the drying meadow you the unspoken apology he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son 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
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I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.
Aimee Bender
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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. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.
Aimee Bender
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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.
Aimee Bender
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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.
Aimee Bender
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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.
Aimee Bender