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Amy Hempel Quotes

Amy Hempel is an American short story writer and journalist. She teaches creative writing at Bennington College and University of Florida.

✵ 14. December 1951
Amy Hempel photo

Works

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel: 24 quotes1 like

Famous Amy Hempel Quotes

“Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Dog of the Marriage: Stories

“He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.”

Amy Hempel

Source: Reasons to Live

“I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

“Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That's the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.”

Amy Hempel

“We can only die in the future, I thought; right now we are always alive.”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

Amy Hempel Quotes about thinking

“I know that homes burn and that you should think what to save before they start to. Not because, in the heat of it, everything looks as valuable as everything else. But, because nothing looks worth the bother, not even your life.”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

“The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

“I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands. In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn. Baby, drink milk. Baby, play ball. And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.”

Amy Hempel

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempe, (2006)

“Then the children went to bed, or at least went upstairs, and the men joined the women for a cigarette on the porch, absently picking ticks engorged like grapes off the sleeping dogs. And when the men kissed the women good night, and their weekend whiskers scratched the women's cheeks, the women did not think shave, they thought stay.”

Amy Hempel book The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, (2006)

Amy Hempel Quotes

“I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

“Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

“if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

“I get rational when I panic.”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

“I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.”

Amy Hempel

Source: At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom: Stories

“It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

“I had my own bed. I slept in it alone, except for those times when we needed—not sex—but sex was how we got there.”

Amy Hempel

Source: The Collected Stories

“I would like to go for a ride with you, have you take me to stand before a river in the dark where hundreds of lightning bugs blink this code in sequence: right here, nowhere else! Right now, never again!”

Amy Hempel

Source: Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories

“Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?”

Amy Hempel

The Man in Bogota

“She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend. The impersonal article is more intimate. It tells me that they are intimate, the nurse and my friend. 'I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend were were in Canada' 'That's how dumb we were,' I say. 'You could be sisters,' the nurse says. So how come, I'll bet they are wondering, it took me so long to get to such a glorious place? But do they ask? They do not ask. Two months, and how long is the drive? The best I can explain it is this - I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not the gritiest, but it's the one that did. A man wrecked his car on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the bone - and when he looked at it - it scared him to death. I mean, he died. So I hadn't dared to look any closer. But now I'm doing it - and hoping that I will live through it.”

Amy Hempel

Reasons to Live (1985)

“When my mother died, my father's early widowhood gave him social cachet he would not have had if they had divorced. He was a bigger catch for the sorrow attached.”

Amy Hempel book The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, (2006)

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