112 Quotes by Amy Hempel

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.

I had my own bed. I slept in it alone, except for those times when we needed—not sex—but sex was how we got there.

consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.

Marriageability" was the original title of "The Harvest.

Some of us are silent sufferers of a noisy disease.

A five-hour flight works out to three days and nights on land, by rail, from sea to shining sea. You can chalk off the hours on the back of the seat ahead. But seventy-some hours will not seem so long to you if you tell yourself first: This is where I am going to be for the rest of my natural life.

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.

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.

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.