Amy Hempel Quotes

United States, Writer
December 14, 1951

Amy Hempel (born December 14, 1951) is an American short story writer and journalist. She teaches creative writing at Bennington College and University of Florida.

Also known as Journalist

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?

Amy Hempel
- Good
- Question
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.

Amy Hempel
- Good
- Men
- Women

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!

Amy Hempel
- Dark
- River
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.

Amy Hempel
- Mother
- Father