112 Quotes by Amy Hempel

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.

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.

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?

I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.

What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.

I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.

Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.

The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?

I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.