The Collected Stories

by Amy Hempel

It’s all about the sentences.

Check out this quote.

except for those times when we needed—not sex—but sex was how we got there.

fluent now in the language of grief.

I had accidents. Then I had bigger ones. But the part that hurt was never the part that got hurt.

I watched myself lose all that I was losing,

Like every kind of recovery, comedy demands surrender.

“like a dive into Liberace’s coat, staying under too long, and coming up coughing up rubies and pearls.”

You are unlovable. I see in your eyes the love of death.

“Drawing is a racing yacht cutting through the ocean,” he said. “Painting is the ocean itself.”

Diminution. This is often a comfort, to be satisfied with less.

What is the saying?—“If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

“You said in your letter that humiliation brings the softness of heart that allows you to listen to God.”

“while the world worlds up at us.”

“The single word that brings an inquisition to an end.”