Aimee Bender Quotes
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At readings, audience members sometimes ask if I keep writing past the two hours if I'm on a roll, but I don't. I figure that if I'm on a roll, it's partially because I know I'm about to stop.
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I like the idea of a place that is dealing with painful, messy, frightening, and very human events that is also so beautiful and ethereal.
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I don't eschew autobiographical writing, but I'm not interested in mine to be so straightforward. The things that tend to move me the most are often those that I have to figure out its meaning for myself. The human being's ability to make a metaphor to describe a human experience is just really cool.
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I love food. I'm not a great cook, but I love to cook, and I like how different it is from writing.
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I love the idea of numerology, but I don't really believe in it. But I like thinking about what numbers convey.
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Granted, I'm someone who loves words. I've always loved poetry - so it's suited to me.
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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 a salary. I think it would be such a different game if I had to write a book that has to sell well.
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For me, even in my first book, the pleasures of writing anything magical is that it has to be physical. It has to be grounded and very much in this world. Then, I get to play with all the consequences of this new thing.
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As a kid, I liked making up stories, and I wrote a story about a kangaroo and a bat with Christy Chang, and she went on to become a surgeon.
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As a kid, I often figured it was good to be patient to a fault.
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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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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 love, I guess, and failure could still be love, but the bad side; and loss.
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I'm obsessed with adolescence. I love to write about people in their 20s. It's such a fraught and exciting and kind of horrible time.
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For me as a person, friendships are incredibly important to me, but in writing, they can distract me.
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I liked Hans Christian Andersen because the tales were so dark and tragic.
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Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it.
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I write on a very strict 2-hour-a-day schedule, and I really respond to structure and invented rules. So even if I'm finding out good information on a character, I will stop when I'm set to stop.
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Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.
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When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It's nourishing; it's rejuvenating.
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Generally, I think most of my writing tends to have some kind of magical element to it. That's the way I can access the emotional life of the character.
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I have trouble describing my own style, since it's sort of like describing my own eye color or something.
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I noticed, when I taught elementary school, how true the squeaky wheel thing is, and how endearing squeaky wheels can be! Because when you're being a squeaky wheel, you're also really letting people know who you are.
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I love all the arts - so museums, theatre, music, walks near trees or by the ocean, time with people, psychological readings.
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I think teaching keeps me honest because if I'm up in front of a class talking about what I think is important about fiction while knowing I myself have just failed to do that hours earlier at my computer - it's a good and humbling reminder.