Quotes by Amy Hempel - Page 2

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 / Writer
Girl
Book
Boys
Copy Quote
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.
Amy Hempel / Writer
Character
Downtown
Giving
Copy Quote
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 / Writer
Men
Ledges
Stories
Copy Quote
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 / Writer
Age
Accomplishment
Mother
Please
Surprising
Young Age
Accomplishments
Recognize
Seemed
Verbal
Copy Quote
I've always known when I start a story what the last line is. It's always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don't know how it's going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever.
Amy Hempel / Writer
Destination
Lines
Needs
Stories
Copy Quote
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 / Writer
Confined
Interesting
Journalism
Taught
Want
Writing
Closer
Embellish
Obviously
Sentence
Tendency
Copy Quote
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 / Writer
Envy
Revision
Tumbling
Waiting
Refine
Rush
Copy Quote
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 / Writer
Land
Night
Sea
Copy Quote
Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. You are trained to get rid of anything nonessential. You go in, you start writing your article, assuming a person's going to stop reading the minute you give them a reason. So the trick is: don't give them one.
Amy Hempel / Writer
Giving
Reading
Writing
Copy Quote
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.
Amy Hempel / Writer
Ideas
Journalism
News Stories
No Idea
Related
Writing
Circling
Closer
Easily
Great One
News Story
Copy Quote
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?
Amy Hempel / Writer
Doctors
Moving
Years
Copy Quote
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 / Writer
Lying
Mean
Thinking
Copy Quote
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.
Amy Hempel / Writer
Good Night
Children
Dog
Sleep
Copy Quote
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.
Amy Hempel / Writer
Children
Mother
Moving
Copy Quote
I know when a story is finished when there is not a single thing more I can think to do to it. And since I know at the start what the last line will be, I know when I've reached that point as logically as I can that it's finished. As for the rewriting-it's not foolproof, of course, but if you're honest about having thought of every possibility and you still come back to what you have, what more can you do?
Amy Hempel / Writer
Lines
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
I told him about the way they get to know you. Not the way people do, the way they flatter you by wanting to know every last thing about you, only it isn't a compliment, it is just efficient, a person getting more quickly to the end of you. Correction - dogs do want to know every last thing about you. They take in the smell of you, they know from the next room, asleep, when a mood settles over you. The difference is there's not an end to it.
Amy Hempel / Writer
Differences
Dog
Smell
Copy Quote
I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands. In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn. Baby, drink milk. Baby, play ball. And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.
Amy Hempel / Writer
Baby
Grief
Mother
Copy Quote
It was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave--and the liar said it really happened--was that once while drinking orange juice, he'd realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar 'realizations.' Is he kidding? I thought. Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn't enough. Once I had food poisoning, and realized I was trapped inside my body.
Amy Hempel / Writer
Teacher
Drinking
Liars
Copy Quote

Related Writer Authors

Voltaire
Writer
Sunday, Nov 21, 1694
Saturday, May 30, 1778
Oscar Wilde
Writer
Monday, Oct 16, 1854
Friday, Nov 30, 1900
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Writer
Thursday, Aug 28, 1749
Thursday, Mar 22, 1832
Zoltan Istvan
Writer
Zoe Valdes
Writer
Saturday, May 02, 1959
Zlata Filipović
Writer
Wednesday, Dec 03, 1980
Zitkala-Sa
Writer
Tuesday, Feb 22, 1876
Wednesday, Jan 26, 1938
Ziauddin Sardar
Writer
Wednesday, Oct 31, 1951
Zelig Pliskin
Writer
Zan Perrion
Writer
Saturday, Jul 02, 1966
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Writer
Yusuf Idris
Writer
Thursday, May 19, 1927
Thursday, Aug 01, 1991
Young-Ha Kim
Writer
Monday, Nov 11, 1968
Yoshiki Nakamura
Writer
Tuesday, Jun 17, 1969
Yoko Ogawa
Writer
Friday, Mar 30, 1962

View All Writer Quotes

Top Authors

John Lewis
U.s. Representative
Wednesday, Feb 21, 1940
Walt Disney
Animator
Thursday, Dec 05, 1901
Thursday, Dec 15, 1966
Chanakya
Teacher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Ronald Reagan
40Th US President
Monday, Feb 06, 1911
Saturday, Jun 05, 2004
George Bernard Shaw
Playwright
Saturday, Jul 26, 1856
Thursday, Nov 02, 1950
Edgar Allan Poe
Author
Thursday, Jan 19, 1809
Sunday, Oct 07, 1849
Les Brown
Author
Saturday, Feb 17, 1945
Billy Graham
Professional Wrestler
Monday, Jun 07, 1943
Marcus Aurelius
Roman Emperor
Saturday, Apr 26, 0121
Friday, Mar 17, 0180
Albert Camus
Author
Friday, Nov 07, 1913
Monday, Jan 04, 1960
Voltaire
Writer
Sunday, Nov 21, 1694
Saturday, May 30, 1778
Carl Sagan
Astronomer
Friday, Nov 09, 1934
Friday, Dec 20, 1996
Billy Graham
Evangelist
Thursday, Nov 07, 1918
Mahatma Gandhi
Civil Rights Leader
Saturday, Oct 02, 1869
Friday, Jan 30, 1948
H. L. Mencken
Journalist
Sunday, Sep 12, 1880
Sunday, Jan 29, 1956

View All Authors

Amy Hempel Quotes - Page 2

App & Tools

Related Writer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

App & Tools

Related Writer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page