Quotes from Amy Hempel

Tutto quello che ho fatto con te era amore.

I'm just headin' off the coast aimlessly. I haven't had much impact. Nothing but depression. Tropical, but nonetheless, depression. Headin' out to sea.

Here is what you do. You ease yourself into a tub of water, you ease yourself down. You lie back and wait for the ripples to smooth away. Then you take a deep breath, and slide your head under, and listen for the playfulness of your heart.

I remember thinking: There will never come a time when I will not be thinking of this. And I was right. And I was wrong

We keep wanting people to be different.

Some of us are silent sufferers of a noisy disease.

For peace of mind I will lie about any thing at any time.

I leave a lot out when I tell the truth. The same when I write a story.

I like parting shots; you can't take them seriously and they're often pretty funny.

Mamas are always saying, be careful. Mine said it to me. Yours said it to you. Be careful out a mama's mouth don't mean nothing 'cept protect yourself better than I did.

He turned off the freeway onto a wide commercial drive of franchised food and failing business. The

I told my old friend Julia that Tropical Storm Julia had just slammed into the Georgia coast. She said, "We'll have to watch me closely as I seem to be gathering strength.

while the world worlds up at us."   I

Marriageability was the original title of The Harvest.

I would have written this next part into the story if anybody would have believed it. But who would have? I was there and I didn't believe it.

Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.

This is a good movie,' she said when snipers felled them both. I missed her already.

I play back everything that has happened to me before this. I want to ask Big Guy if he is doing this, too. I want him to know what it clearly seems to me: that 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?

They knew me as the one who got jacked up on rage and didn't know what to do with it, until a dog dug a ball from a corner of his kennel and brought it to my side, as thought to ask, Have you thought of this?

The striking part of his communication is what he doesn't say, when saying something would make a difference.

She traveled the world, and turned into the person she could be in other places with people she would never see again.

She was many years older than my husband, running on the fumes of her beauty.

When you discover something long after others have known it, there is a heady contentment that comes.

No one tells me better stories, he assured me. I was aware of the point at which a compliment becomes a trap, because you are expected to keep doing the thing you are praised for; resentment will follow when you stop.