Amy Hempel (born December 14, 1951) is an American short story writer and journalist. She teaches creative writing at Bennington College and University of Florida.
I'm not good at small talk; I'm not good at big talk; and medium talk just doesn't come up.
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. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How many children do you have? "Four," she will say, "—three," and years later, "Three," she will say, "—four.
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.
They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.
I get rational when I panic.
When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.
I leave a lot out when I tell the truth
I know that homes burn and that you should think what to save before they start to. Not because, in the heat of it, everything looks as valuable as everything else. But, because nothing looks worth the bother, not even your life.
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.
The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.
Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
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.
I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.
What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.
Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.
I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.
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.
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?
I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.
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?