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I get rational when I panic.

Amy Hempel

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Amy Hempel
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Panic
Rational

More quotes by Amy Hempel

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I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.
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I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
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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 leave a lot out when I tell the truth
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It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.
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An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
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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.
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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.
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Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
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For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time.
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Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.
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I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.
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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.
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Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.
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My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.
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I'm not good at small talk I'm not good at big talk and medium talk just doesn't come up.
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When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.
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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!
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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.
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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