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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

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Amy Hempel
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Kind
Died
Thinking
Seen
Since
Turns
Mother
Zucchini
Right
Cucumber
Heart
Cucumbers
Thing
Steam

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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.
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He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.
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I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
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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.
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I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.
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What I think, Chatty says, is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.
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The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.
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The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.
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consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.
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I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.
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Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
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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.
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It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.
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For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time.
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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.
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Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.
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Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
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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?
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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?
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I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dogs behavior... But maybe, it’s that they’re dog, and that’s what dogs do.
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