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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. "
Aimee Bender
Great
Food
Cook
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" In terms of foods for me, I think I have more of the usual associations - foods from childhood that I associate with care and love, from relatives or special restaurants like the kind elderly man who dusted seasoning salt on French fries at the corner burger joint. "
Aimee Bender
Childhood
Man
Me
" Novels are so much unrulier and more stressful to write. A short story can last two pages and then it's over, and that's kind of a relief. I really like balancing the two. "
Aimee Bender
Story
Kind
Over
" 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 will move somewhere. There's something about plays where you can feel that sense of artifice at any moment. "
Aimee Bender
You
Play
Moment
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
People
Kind
Adolescence
" 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
Feelings
Large
Lovely
" When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It's nourishing; it's rejuvenating. "
Aimee Bender
Feel Good
Language
Feel
" I love the idea of numerology, but I don't really believe in it. But I like thinking about what numbers convey. "
Aimee Bender
Like
Believe
Love
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Cake
Birthday
Happy
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Myself
Cool
Me
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Voice
Good
Experience
" Writing can be a frightening, distressing business, and whatever kind of structure or buffer is available can help a lot. "
Aimee Bender
Help
Kind
Structure
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Life
Think
Character
" For me as a person, friendships are incredibly important to me, but in writing, they can distract me. "
Aimee Bender
Distract
Writing
Person
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Feel
Think
Book
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Sometimes
Know
Past
" As a kid, I often figured it was good to be patient to a fault. "
Aimee Bender
Be Patient
Patient
Kid
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
School
People
True
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Good
Important
Myself
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Surgeon
Bat
Story
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Beautiful
Messy
Events
" I liked Hans Christian Andersen because the tales were so dark and tragic. "
Aimee Bender
Tales
Tragic
Christian
" I get a little myopic in the act of doing any writing. I think I'm not as interested or not as able to write about balance, because I think there's something I want to try to get at. I'm trying to get at something about the experience of growing up or about families. "
Aimee Bender
Think
Try
Experience
" 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. "
Aimee Bender
Moments
Failure
Loss
" I really like feeling connected to people and feeling like I have a good, solid sense of empathy. "
Aimee Bender
Feeling
Empathy
People