Quotes from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“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.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“…kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

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

“Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“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, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q...”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“...a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“When the light at Vernon turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“...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.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“It was the kind of conversation you could only hold in whispers.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“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 grown up in poverty, telling stories, often, of extending a chicken to its fullest capacity, so as soon as a restaurant served his dish, he would promptly cut it in half and ask for a to-go container. Portions are too big anyway, he’d grumble, patting his waistline. He’d only give away his food if the corners were cleanly cut, as he believed a homeless person would just feel worse eating food with ragged bitemarks at the edges – as if, he said, they are dogs, or bacteria. Dignity, he said, lifting his half-lasagna into its box, is no detail.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“I watched as she added a question mark at the end. Arc, line, space, dot.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me, I am not happy, help me -- like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“When I crossed the street, according to my mother, I still had to hold someone’s hand. At ten, I would be able to cross streets unhanded. I’d held on to Joseph’s many times before, for many years, but holding his was like holding a plant, and the disappointment of fingers that didn’t grasp back was so acute that at some point I’d opted to take his forearm instead. For the first few street crossings, that’s what I did, but on the corner at Oakwood, on an impulse, I grabbed George’s hand. Right away: fingers, holding back. The sun. More clustery vines of bougainvillea draping over windows in bulges of dark pink. His warm palm. An orange tabby lounging on the sidewalk. People in torn black T-shirts sitting and smoking on steps. The city, opening up.
We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“You try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Joseph would reach out to me occasionally, the same way the desert blooms a flower every now and then. You get so used to the subtleties of beige and Brown, and then a sunshine-yellow poppy bursts from the arm of a prickly pear.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“I loved my brother, but relying on him was like closing a hand around air.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother's palm and fingertips, he was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I'd always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph's part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.”
― Aimee Bender, quote from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

About the author

Popular quotes

“It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself.”
― Rebecca West, quote from The Return of The Soldier

“people don't generally believe themselves to be evil. Just strong. And they think that the world owes them something”
― Mary Elizabeth Summer, quote from Trust Me, I'm Lying

“When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad ... The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary) but the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from Fictions

“Collective security had a fine sound, but it was still little more than a word; it would still be the United States, and the United States alone, that held the far frontier. No one else had the will or the power.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, quote from This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness

“The last thing I want to do is find my way back to myself when I've already found the best part of myself in her.”
― Meredith Wild, quote from Hard Love

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.