Amy Hempel Quotes

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we actually, to speak of? We live by exaggeration.

A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.

Exaggeration is my only reality.

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.

The joys we expect are not so bright, nor the troubles so dark as we fancy they will be.

The world is cynical and sarcastic, but that doesn't mean that that's always the truth.

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

Reality bears no relationship to the super-heated rhetoric.

You always underestimate - rather than be disappointed.

People expect too much. People who expect heaven always fall into hell - that is the law. Expect heaven and hell is certain. Don't expect heaven and there will never be any hell.

Your mind creates your reality. If you expect nothing, you open up the universe to give you options. If you expect the worst, you usually get it.

Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. The people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic.

As I have discovered again and again, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time.

Things are never as bad or as good as they seem.

We are never either so fortunate or so misfortunate as we imagine.

I think people like to exaggerate about the number of takes you do.

Repeat, over and over again, in case anyone forgets it or believes the contrary, that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

When the outlook is steeped in pessimism, I remind myself, "Two and two still make four, and you can't keep humankind down for long."

Reality is always kinder than your thinking.

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?

How you experience your life depends on how you look at it. If you look at it as a constant stream of difficulties and challenges, messes and problems, it will show up that way. If, on the other hand, you see it as a continuing flow of good fortune, one good thing after another, that is what you will encounter.

When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.

What is nonsense, and what is not, then, may be merely a matter of perspective.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

What you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.