Aimee Bender (born June 28, 1969) is an American novelist and short story writer, known for her surreal plots and characters.
Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children. . . It was a fleeting statement, one I didn't think she'd hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.
I don't think so, I don't agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.
Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can’t fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.
I admired that stride; it was like he folded space in two with it.