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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: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Mean
Underwater
Sinking
Stopped
Doesn
Stills
Still

More quotes by Amy Hempel

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I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.
Amy Hempel
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Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
Amy Hempel
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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.
Amy Hempel
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consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.
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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I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.
Amy Hempel
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Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
Amy Hempel
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In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.
Amy Hempel
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I've always known when I start a story what the last line is. It's always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don't know how it's going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever.
Amy Hempel
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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.
Amy Hempel
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I know that homes burn and that you should think what to save before they start to. Not because, in the heat of it, everything looks as valuable as everything else. But, because nothing looks worth the bother, not even your life.
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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I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
Amy Hempel
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Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?
Amy Hempel
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I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.
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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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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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.
Amy Hempel
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I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
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