“You can't predict the outcome. You can't raise a child and then tell them what to think.” — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“Rose,sensing her mother's distress..."She did not face me, but I could feel the vibration of tears, a kind of pain hive,rustling inside… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children... It was a fleeting statement, one I didn't… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“My father usually agreed with her requests, because stamped in his two-footed stance and jaw was the word Provider, and he loved… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“In those days, she let her hair loose, down to her waist, and whenever I met old friends of hers, they would… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son; she is the first… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“...after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“In the evenings, my father and I ate dinner quietly in front of the TV together. Wednesday night, Thursday. Frozen dinners I'd… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother's palm and… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“He made a good salary but he did not flaunt it. He’d been raised in Chicago proper by a Lithuanian Jewish mother… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“He breathed in her hair, the sweet-smelling thickness of it. My father usually agreed with her requests, because stamped in his two-footed… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“When I crossed the street, according to my mother, I still had to hold someone’s hand. At ten, I would be able… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“My mother had been baking more often in general, but she took plates of desserts to the carpentry studio, where her boss,… — Aimee Bender Copy Share Image
“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… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
There's a spectrum of those moments of connection and the moments we fail to connect, going from super-large successes to failures. Success would be… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
I did plays in college, and I have half of a play. But I'm kind of stuck. I keep revisiting it so maybe it… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
“My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope - make yourself a structure you can live inside.” — Aimee Bender Copy Share
One thing I don't want to feel is marketplace pressure, so I'm really glad I enjoy teaching because I can rely on that for… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language. — Aimee Bender Copy Share
“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,… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
I peeled the skin off a grape in slippery little triangles, and I understood then that I would be undressing every item of food… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
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,… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
“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… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
“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… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
…kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks. — Aimee Bender Copy Share
“And in it all, the sensation of shaking my fists at the sky, shaking my fists high up to the sky, because that is… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
“He made a good salary but he did not flaunt it. He’d been raised in Chicago proper by a Lithuanian Jewish mother who had… — Aimee Bender Copy Share
