Amy Hempel quotes

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)
I had a mother I could only seem to please with verbal accomplishments of some sort or another. She read constantly, so I read constantly. If I used words that might have seemed surprising at a young age, she would recognize that and it would please her. View quote
Amy Hempel
I probably have less revision than those who have that wonderful rush of story to tell - you know, I can't wait to tell you what happened the other day. It comes tumbling out and maybe then they go back and refine. I kind of envy that way of working, but I just have never done it. View quote
Amy Hempel
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! View quote
Amy Hempel
Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. View quote
Amy Hempel
I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry. View quote
Amy Hempel
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. View quote
Amy Hempel
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. View quote
Amy Hempel
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? View quote
Amy Hempel
I've always known when I start a story what the last line is. It's always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don't know how it's going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever. View quote
Amy Hempel
We can only die in the future, I thought; right now we are always alive. (Amy Hempel)
I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story. View quote
Amy Hempel
I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true - nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be. View quote
Amy Hempel
I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself. View quote
Amy Hempel
I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people. View quote
Amy Hempel
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. View quote
Amy Hempel
Dreams: the place most of us get what we need. View quote
Amy Hempel
Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life? View quote
Amy Hempel
I get rational when I panic. View quote
Amy Hempel
It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it. View quote
Amy Hempel
I started writing by doing small related things but not the thing itself, circling it and getting closer. I had no idea how to write fiction. So I did journalism because there were rules I could learn. You can teach someone to write a news story. They might not write a great one, but you can teach that pretty easily. (Amy Hempel)
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. View quote
Amy Hempel
I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. View quote
Amy Hempel
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? View quote
Amy Hempel
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. View quote
Amy Hempel