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Sometimes I can better describe a person by another person's reaction. In a story in my first book, I couldn't think of a way to sufficiently describe the charisma of a certain boy, so the narrator says, I knew girls who saved his gum.
Amy Hempel
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Amy Hempel
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
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Chicago
Illinois
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Girl
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First
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More quotes by Amy Hempel
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
I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.
Amy Hempel
The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.
Amy Hempel
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
nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
Amy Hempel
I leave a lot out when I tell the truth
Amy Hempel
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
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
consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.
Amy Hempel
He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.
Amy Hempel
I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
Amy Hempel
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.
Amy Hempel
They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.
Amy Hempel
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
I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.
Amy Hempel
We can only die in the future, I thought right now we are always alive.
Amy Hempel
Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.
Amy Hempel
When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.
Amy Hempel
I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
Amy Hempel
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