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

Amy Hempel

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

More quotes by 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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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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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?
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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
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I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
Amy Hempel
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I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.
Amy Hempel
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For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time.
Amy Hempel
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When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.
Amy Hempel
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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.
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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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
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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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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
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I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and over again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.
Amy Hempel
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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
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Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
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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They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.
Amy Hempel
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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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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