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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

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Amy Hempel
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Thinking
Understand
Tradition
Means
Reach
Failures
Truth
Asking
Letter
Persons
Begin
Cards
Person
Lies
Table
Mean
Question
Tables
Trying
Written
Letters
Think
Lying
Western

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A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
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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 often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
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In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.
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He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.
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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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I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
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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.
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