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I leave a lot out when I tell the truth

Amy Hempel

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Amy Hempel
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Truth
Leave
Tell

More quotes by 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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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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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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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 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
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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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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
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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
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I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.
Amy Hempel
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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
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consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.
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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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 would like to go for a ride with you, have you take me to stand before a river in the dark where hundreds of lightning bugs blink this code in sequence: right here, nowhere else! Right now, never again!
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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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
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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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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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An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
Amy Hempel
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They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.
Amy Hempel