Amy Hempel Quotes

I don't stretch my hand out anymore, but I never get tired of waiting for the next magic.

A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier times.

I sometimes think it's a mistake to have been happy when one was a child. One should always want to go on, not back.

It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.

It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only who really wants to?

And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them.

Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home.

I miss All Stars, by the way. I was just telling people: how am I going to get by until January?

I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.

Do you remember the time darlin' when everything made more sense in the world? Oh I remember, I remember... when life made more sense... Take me back, take me back, take me way back... to when life made more sense.

It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for.

Heart-aches are forgotten, tears lose their bitterness, and like a leaf of lavendar in a store of linen, so does Memory make life sweet.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning, but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.

I cannot speculate on what our cluttered mind will save- sleepy Sundays, or a nosebleed after love. I know only the dying heart needs the nourishment of memory to live beyond too many winters.

Have you ever been homesick for someplace that doesn't actually exist anymore? Someplace that exists only in your mind?

I stare out the window and wait for spring.

Waiting is directed at nothing: any object that could gratify it would only efface it. Still, it is not confined to one place, it is not a resigned immobility; it has the endurance of a movement that will never end and would never promise itself the reward of rest; it does not wrap itself in interiority; all of it falls irremediably outside.

I love that feeling of when it's touching and it makes you happy but there's a melancholy or bittersweet glaze to it.

When I run, I always pretend I am running toward Nikki, and it makes me feel like I am decreasing the amount of time I have to wait until I see her again.

There is a general place in your brain, I think, reserved for melancholy of relationships past. It grows and prospers as life progresses, forcing you finally, against your better judgment, to listen to country music.

I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.

I do not think that life has a suspense more sickening than that of expecting a letter which does not come.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

i wait. with all my dreams, i know her heart, and i know i'm almost there.