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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: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Means
Reach
Failures
Truth
Asking
Letter
Persons
Begin
Cards
Person
Lies
Table
Mean
Question
Tables
Trying
Written
Letters
Think
Lying
Western
Thinking
Understand
Tradition

More quotes by Amy Hempel

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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.
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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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He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.
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Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.
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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 year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.
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nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
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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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I leave a lot out when I tell the truth
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I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.
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Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
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For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time.
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I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.
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I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.
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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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