Amy Hempel Quotes

We can only die in the future, I thought; right now we are always alive.

Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don't get all writerly: 'He opened the door.' There, it's open.

Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.

Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.

I leave a lot out when I tell the truth

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."

In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.

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.

Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.

They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.

An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.

I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.

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.

I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.

I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.

Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.

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.

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.

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.

Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?