Quote

I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.

Amy Hempel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amy Hempel
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Chimp
Talking
Hands
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Amy Hempel

Image
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
Image
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
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
My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.
Amy Hempel
Image
Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.
Amy Hempel
Image
Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
And I see that not touching for so long was a drive to the beach with the windows rolled up so the waves feel that much colder.
Amy Hempel
Image
I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
Amy Hempel
Image
I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.
Amy Hempel
Image
Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.
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
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
Image
I'm not good at small talk I'm not good at big talk and medium talk just doesn't come up.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.
Amy Hempel
Image
I leave a lot out when I tell the truth
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 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
In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.
Amy Hempel