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I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.

Amy Hempel

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Amy Hempel
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Moved
Head
Days
Like
Severed
Finishes
Sentence
Sentences

More quotes by Amy Hempel

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An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
Amy Hempel
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As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.
Amy Hempel
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Sometimes I can better describe a person by another person's reaction. In a story in my first book, I couldn't think of a way to sufficiently describe the charisma of a certain boy, so the narrator says, I knew girls who saved his gum.
Amy Hempel
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I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
Amy Hempel
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Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
Amy Hempel
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They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.
Amy Hempel
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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?
Amy Hempel
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I get rational when I panic.
Amy Hempel
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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?
Amy Hempel
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He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.
Amy Hempel
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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
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I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you'd find in a cartoon bubble.
Amy Hempel
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When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.
Amy Hempel
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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
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My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.
Amy Hempel
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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
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There’s so much I can’t read because I get so exasperated. Someone starts describing the character boarding the plane and pulling the seat back. And I just want to say, Babe, I have been downtown. I have been up in a plane. Give me some credit.
Amy Hempel
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I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.
Amy Hempel
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Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
Amy Hempel
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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.
Amy Hempel