Amy Hempel Quotes

There's never one sunrise the same or one sunset the same.

These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

There is no way that you can ever really repeat something. I have this great belief that the magic of the moment can never be recaptured.

Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow.

Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?

Theatre can't be done again and again and again and again - it's organic.

It ends all things: birds, trees, flowers, mountain tops, and business; it grinds stones to sand, and as terrible as it is, and it's the most beautiful thing we have in our lives - time.

A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.

Dark clouds become heaven's flowers when kissed by light.

...she woke up in time to see the sun sending up spies ahead of him to mark out the road through the dark. He peeped up over the door sill of the world and made a little foolishness with red.

Meanwhile let us cast one shadow in air and water.

The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyone the sculpted flower.

You can't stop time. You can't capture light. You can only turn your face up and let it rain down.

What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew lies on its body?

Every thing that grows / Holds in perfection but a little moment.

I love the night. I love to feel the tide of darkness rising, slowly and slowly washing, turning over and over, lifting, floating, all that lies strewn upon the dark beach, all that lies hid in rocky hollows.

The tulip's petals shine in dew, All beautiful, but none alike.

If I describe a sunny morning in May (the buds, the wet-winged flies, the warm sun and cool breeze), I am also implying the perishing quality of a morning in May, and a good description of May sets up the possibility of a May disaster.

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

The gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap.

Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

Laugh out, O stream, from your bed of green, / Where you lie in the sun's embrace; / And talk to the reeds that o'er you lean / To touch your dimpled face.