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I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.

Amy Hempel

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Amy Hempel
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Feel
Feels
Sentence
Writing
Sentences
Good
Story
Write
Another
Ends
Stories

More quotes by Amy Hempel

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I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.
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nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
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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.
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Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.
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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?
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I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
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consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.
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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.
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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.
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I leave a lot out when I tell the truth
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I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you'd find in a cartoon bubble.
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I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.
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He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.
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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.
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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.
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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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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?
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An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
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'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.
Amy Hempel