Quote

Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.

Amy Hempel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amy Hempel
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Think
Concerns
Thinking
Shakespeare
Concern
Read
Spiritual
Look
Come
Looks
Carnal

More quotes by Amy Hempel

Image
I'm not good at small talk I'm not good at big talk and medium talk just doesn't come up.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.
Amy Hempel
Image
My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.
Amy Hempel
Image
The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.
Amy Hempel
Image
consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.
Amy Hempel
Image
In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.
Amy Hempel
Image
Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
Amy Hempel
Image
I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
Amy Hempel
Image
I get rational when I panic.
Amy Hempel
Image
Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. You are trained to get rid of anything nonessential. You go in, you start writing your article, assuming a person's going to stop reading the minute you give them a reason. So the trick is: don't give them one.
Amy Hempel
Image
I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and over again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.
Amy Hempel
Image
All those years on the psychiatrist's couch and suddenly the couch is moving. Good God, she is on that couch when the big one hits. Maidy didn't tell you, but you know what her doctor said? She sprang from the couch and said, My God, was that an earthquake? The doctor said this: Did it feel like an earthquake to you?
Amy Hempel
Image
He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don't get all writerly: 'He opened the door.' There, it's open.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
Amy Hempel
Image
And I see that not touching for so long was a drive to the beach with the windows rolled up so the waves feel that much colder.
Amy Hempel
Image
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