COUNTDOWN TO GREATNESS

“Another time he woke me up in the middle of the night, lifted me off the pale blue sheets, led me outside to the stars and whispered: Look, Annie, look–there is no space for anything but dreaming. I listened, sleepily, wandered back to bed bed and found myself wide awake, staring at the ceiling, unable to dream at all. Ben fell asleep right away, but I crept back outside. I tried to dream up to the stars, but I didn’t know how to do that. I tried to find a star no one in all of history had ever wished on before, and wondered what would happen if I did.” - Aimee Bender from "The Rememberer"

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“The woman he met. He met a woman. This woman was the woman he met. She was not the woman he expected to meet or planned to met or had carved into his head in full dress with a particular nose and eyes and lips and a very particular brain. No, this was a different woman, the one he met.” — Aimee Bender from “The Meeting”

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“My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.” — Aimee Bender from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

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“I’ve noticed this: when it’s the first date, and you fuck, the guy holds you much better than he does the next few times. The first date, you’re sort of the stand-in for whomever he loved last, before he fully realizes that you’re not her, and so you get all this nice residue emotion. I felt cherished, tucked into his belly, like we’d known each other for years and I was his wonderful girl and we both slept great.” — Aimee Bender from The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

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“Kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years
surviving off rice sticks.” ― Aimee Bender from the Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

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“I think of that girl that I read about in the paper—the one with the flammable skirt. She’d bought a rayon chiffon skirt, purple with wavy lines all over it. She wore it to a party and was dancing, too close to the vanilla-smelling candles, and suddenly she lit up like a pine needle torch. When the boy dancing next to her felt the heat and smelled the plasticky smell, he screamed and rolled the burning girl up in the carpet. She got third-degree burns up and down her thighs. But what I keep wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think? Before she knew it was the candles, did she think she’d done it herself? With the amazing turn of her hips, and the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?” — Aimee Bender from The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

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jj - angels


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Xiao Wu (Pickpocket)


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The Showrunner by Joshua Dalton
http://www.pankmagazine.com/the-showrunner/

But it’s okay that I’m an unemployed screenwriter still living with my parents, because one day I’ll turn this into a great sitcom.

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