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Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.

Amy Hempel

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Amy Hempel
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Stopped
Doesn
Stills
Still
Mean
Underwater
Sinking

More quotes by Amy Hempel

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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.
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.
Amy Hempel
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I am not quite myself, I think.But who here is quite himself? And yet there is a way in which we are all more ourselves than ever, I suppose.
Amy Hempel
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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
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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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The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.
Amy Hempel
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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.
Amy Hempel
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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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My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.
Amy Hempel
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A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
Amy Hempel
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I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
Amy Hempel
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I had a mother I could only seem to please with verbal accomplishments of some sort or another. She read constantly, so I read constantly. If I used words that might have seemed surprising at a young age, she would recognize that and it would please her.
Amy Hempel
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It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.
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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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
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Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
Amy Hempel
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Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
Amy Hempel
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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
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I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.
Amy Hempel
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I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
Amy Hempel