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
writing stories ends
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.
mother accomplishment age
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.
men ledges stories
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?
dark rivers bugs
I would like to go for a ride with you, have you take me to stand before a river in the dark where hundreds of lightning bugs blink this code in sequence: right here, nowhere else! Right now, never again!
imagine persons
It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.
waiting remember enjoy
He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.
character giving downtown
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.
giving mind sparks
I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.
jobs work pay
My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.
would-be moments sentences
As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.
want knows
I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.
beach long touching
And I see that not touching for so long was a drive to the beach with the windows rolled up so the waves feel that much colder.
panic rational
I get rational when I panic.
mother baby grief
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.