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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 meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes I give you three minutes to show me the spark.
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I leave a lot out when I tell the truth
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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.
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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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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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For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time.
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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.
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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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He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.
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I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.
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An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
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I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dogs behavior... But maybe, it’s that they’re dog, and that’s what dogs do.
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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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There’s so much I can’t read because I get so exasperated. Someone starts describing the character boarding the plane and pulling the seat back. And I just want to say, Babe, I have been downtown. I have been up in a plane. Give me some credit.
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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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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 often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
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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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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A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
Amy Hempel