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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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Amy Hempel
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Think
Thinking
Chatty
Loves
Says
Woman
Even
Men

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.
Amy Hempel
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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.
Amy Hempel
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nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
Amy Hempel
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Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.
Amy Hempel
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I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.
Amy Hempel
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Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?
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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A five-hour flight works out to three days and nights on land, by rail, from sea to shining sea. You can chalk off the hours on the back of the seat ahead. But seventy-some hours will not seem so long to you if you tell yourself first: This is where I am going to be for the rest of my natural life.
Amy Hempel
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They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.
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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A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
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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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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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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An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
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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Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?
Amy Hempel
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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.
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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When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.
Amy Hempel