Amy Hempel Quotes

What you have to decide... is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, would this be how you'd want to have spent it? Listen, the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody. So dont be afraid. Be alive.

Don’t you want to be alive before you die?

You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

Life is not too short... we just wait too long to begin it.

How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88)

As the seconds of our lives are ticking away, you have to realize that life needs to be an adventure.

Eternity does not start after you die; it begins when you really live.

You have to live before you die, or you'll die before you live.

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

I used to think the only way to be truly alive is to confront your mortality.

One of the wonderful things about being ALIVE is that it's never too late.

Death shows up to remind us to live more fully.

It always seems to me that so few people live - they just seem to exist and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't live always - til we die physically.

I'd rather die while I'm living then live while I'm dead.

If you're not busy living, you're dying.

I don't think you should die until you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can.

I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn't be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again. This terrified me. The thought that I would live my entire life, look at it and realize I blew it forced me to do something with my life.

The most important thing to do before you die is live.

I've come to believe that whoever I am didn't start on December 14, 1946, and isn't going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

My experience in Iraq made me realize, and during the recovery, that I could have died. And I just had to do more with my life.

To me, at forty-four years old, my book was a search for truth and identity.

Wonderful things happen when you turn 50: you change perspective. You ask, 'Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? What have I not done that I want to do?'

It's been dawning on me slowly that for the past 35 years I have been cast against type, and I'm finally getting to do what I really wanted to do.

Basically, I feel fortunate to have realized what the goal is in life. There's no point in dying having gone through your life without knowing who you are, what you are, or what the purpose of life is. And that's all it is.