Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amy Hempel
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 14
Journalist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Baby
Word
Doesn
Men
Time
Scare
Calls

More quotes by Amy Hempel

Image
nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.
Amy Hempel
Image
I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.
Amy Hempel
Image
I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
Amy Hempel
Image
A five-hour flight works out to three days and nights on land, by rail, from sea to shining sea. You can chalk off the hours on the back of the seat ahead. But seventy-some hours will not seem so long to you if you tell yourself first: This is where I am going to be for the rest of my natural life.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
What I think, Chatty says, is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.
Amy Hempel
Image
Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
Amy Hempel
Image
I leave a lot out when I tell the truth
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
I am not quite myself, I think.But who here is quite himself? And yet there is a way in which we are all more ourselves than ever, I suppose.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
Amy Hempel
Image
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
Image
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