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I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.

Amy Hempel

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Amy Hempel
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Veterinarian
Slipped
Organic
Chemistry
Wanted

More quotes by Amy Hempel

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We can only die in the future, I thought right now we are always alive.
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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Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.
Amy Hempel
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I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
Amy Hempel
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My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.
Amy Hempel
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nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
Amy Hempel
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As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.
Amy Hempel
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In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.
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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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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Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
Amy Hempel
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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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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 sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.
Amy Hempel
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if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.
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
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Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?
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 think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you'd find in a cartoon bubble.
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