Quote

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.

Amy Hempel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amy Hempel
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Comes
Probably
Tell
Wonderful
Stories
Maybe
Tumbling
Back
Happened
Refine
Done
Waiting
Revision
Kind
Working
Rush
Way
Story
Envy
Never
Less
Wait

More quotes by Amy Hempel

Image
I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?
Amy Hempel
Image
Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. You are trained to get rid of anything nonessential. You go in, you start writing your article, assuming a person's going to stop reading the minute you give them a reason. So the trick is: don't give them one.
Amy Hempel
Image
I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
Amy Hempel
Image
I get rational when I panic.
Amy Hempel
Image
Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.
Amy Hempel
Image
He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Amy Hempel
Image
I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.
Amy Hempel
Image
For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time.
Amy Hempel
Image
A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.
Amy Hempel