" 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."
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel)

"I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark."
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel)

"Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?"
— Amy Hempel (The Dog of the Marriage: Stories)

"I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be."
— Amy Hempel (At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom: Stories)

"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."
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel)

"if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive."
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of 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."
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel)

"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?"
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel)

"She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend. The impersonal article is more intimate. It tells me that they are intimate, the nurse and my friend.
'I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend were were in Canada'
'That's how dumb we were,' I say.
'You could be sisters,' the nurse says.
So how come, I'll bet they are wondering, it took me so long to get to such a glorious place? But do they ask?
They do not ask.
Two months, and how long is the drive?
The best I can explain it is this - I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not eh grisliest, but it's the one that did. A man wrecked his care on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the bone - and when he looked at it - it scared him to death.
I mean, he died.
So I hadn't dared to look any closer. But now I'm doing it - and hoping that I will live through it."
— Amy Hempel (Reasons to Live)

"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."
— Amy Hempel

"He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good."
— Amy Hempel (Reasons to Live)

"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 (Tumble Home: A Novella and Short 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?"
— Amy Hempel

"It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it."
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel)

"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."
— Amy Hempel (At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom: Stories)

"Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare."
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of 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, the thoughtL stay."
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel)

"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 (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel)

"I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back."
— Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel)

"When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard."
— Amy Hempel