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I had a mother I could only seem to please with verbal accomplishments of some sort or another. She read constantly, so I read constantly. If I used words that might have seemed surprising at a young age, she would recognize that and it would please her.

Amy Hempel

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Amy Hempel
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Another
Constantly
Seems
Please
Used
Seem
Verbal
Young
Sort
Accomplishments
Might
Age
Surprising
Would
Read
Accomplishment
Words
Recognize
Mother
Seemed

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Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?
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We can only die in the future, I thought right now we are always alive.
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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.
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He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.
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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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nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
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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.
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Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.
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It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.
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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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I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.
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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.
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I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
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I'm not good at small talk I'm not good at big talk and medium talk just doesn't come up.
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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.
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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.
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He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.
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I get rational when I panic.
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An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
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