Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel
Amy Hempelis an American short story writer and journalist. She teaches creative writing at Bennington College and University of Florida...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth14 December 1951
CountryUnited States of America
envy waiting tumbling
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.
dog smell differences
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.
men years vases
The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.
mother heart thinking
Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That's the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.
people stories levels
I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.
mother father sorrow
When my mother died, my father's early widowhood gave him social cachet he would not have had if they had divorced. He was a bigger catch for the sorrow attached.
thinking way
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.
thinking laughing cartoon
I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you'd find in a cartoon bubble.
thinking hands talking
I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
ideas might sparks
An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
telling-the-truth
I leave a lot out when I tell the truth
good-night dog children
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.
moving years earthquakes
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?
people leaving-me feels
I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.