Quotes from Amy Hempel

The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.

I like radio personalities, and I like to change lanes. And losing yourself on the freeway is like living at the beach--you're not aware of lapsed time, and suddenly you're there, where it was you were going.

I read about a famous mystery writer who worked for one week in a department store. One day she saw a woman come in and buy a doll. The mystery writer found out the woman's name, and took a bus to New Jersey to see where the woman lived. That was all. Years later, she referred to this woman as the love of her life. It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge 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?

A story happens when two equally appealing forces, or characters, or ideas try to occupy the same place at the same time, and they're both right.

I think it was that love that I loved. That kind of involvement was reassuring; I felt it would extend to me, as well. That it did not or that it did, but only as much and no more, was confusing at first.

For example, the questions that say, Would you prefer... Would you prefer (a) Answer questions about what you do, (b) Answer questions about what you know, (c) Answer questions about what you think? My answer is Depends. But it's not one of the choices. I am having to think in terms of Always, Sometimes, Never.

A famous artist is approached by a student. You don't remember me, the student says correctly, but years ago you said something that changed my life. You said, 'Photography is death.' After that, says the student, I threw out my camera. I began again. I want to thank you for changing my life. Leave me alone, says the artist. Photography is life.

Women who are attacked phone a hotline for advice. Don't report a rape, the women are told. Call it indecent exposure. A guy who takes it out and doesn't do anything with it--cops figure that guys is sick.

You will stand in line for snacks behind good clothes on bad bodies, behind the man who is so drunk he has lost his shoes, and so belligerent no one will help him find them.

Mrs. Linden was beautiful in spirit and in fact. Her wish, she told her daughter, was to be a beautiful woman and surprise people because she was a beautiful woman who was kind.

Tell me things I won't mind forgetting, she said. 'Make it useless stuff or skip it.

I believe that 99 percent of what anyone does can effectively be postponed.

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.

It is such a pretty story, told to me by a Cuban woman I met in a bar at the beach. She left the bar before I did; a drunken man took her place. He leaned into me and said, I see in your dark eyes that you have suffered, and you have compassion, and I have suffered, and I have compassion, and I see in your eyes that I can say things to you-- My eyes are blue, I said.

The women advised long walks. They told the wife to watch the sun rise and set, to look for solace in the natural world, though they admitted there was no comfort to be found in the world and they would all be fools to expect it.

When she sees him, Holly says, it's like the sunsets at the beach--once the sun drops, the sand chills quickly. Then it's like a lot of times that were good ten minutes ago and don't count now.

When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.

The neighborhood drug dealer kicks out his wife. He moves in a girlfriend and the wife finds out. The wife lets herself back into the house and steals a hundred thousand dollars that the drug dealer can't report missing. The drug dealer's wife goes to India, where she sends her husband a cable: The people here are poor so I gave them all your money.

At a certain point, it would seem, you have to stop caring, and stop trying to protect what someone else is set to destroy.

It's the natural trajectory of a writing career that a writer becomes better at being herself.

Pretty soon three sleeping bags formed a triangle in the master bedroom. The father was the hypotenuse. The girl asked him to brush out her hair, which he did while the boy ate a tangerine, peeling it up close to his face, inhaling the mist. Then he held each segment to the light to find seeds. In his lap, cat paws fluttered like dreaming eyes. "What

I am so suggestible. When Chatty asks if I am hungry, I say, I could be. I would try to become the woman you wanted without even knowing I was trying. As it is, I am barely the woman I am.

he married the most beautiful woman he ever saw and learned the irrelevance of beauty.