December 2011
59 posts
November 2011
96 posts
“
Wesley sat back down beside me and said it was time to change his life. He wanted to. “But how does a person start?”
“Small,” I said. “Start small and work up. The way you would clean a house. You start in one room. Maybe you give yourself more time than you need to finish that room, just so you finish it. Then you go on to the next one. You start small, and then everything you do gets bigger.”
I myself have never done it this way.
” —“Three Popes Walk into a Bar” by Amy Hempel
“About Eve Grant, Wesley has said that he married the most beautiful woman he ever saw and learned the irrelevance of beauty.”
—“Three Popes Walk into a Bar” by Amy Hempel
“Learning to knit was the obvious thing. The separation of tangled threads, the working-together of raveled ends into something tangible and whole—this mending was as confounding as the groom who drives into a stop sign on the way to his wedding. Because symptoms mean just what they are. What about the woman whose empty hand won’t close because she cannot grasp that her child is gone?”
—“Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep” by Amy Hempel
“I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.”
—“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” by Amy Hempel
“
“They say the smart dog obeys, but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.”
“Yes,” she says, “the smarter anything knows when to disobey.”
” —“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” by Amy Hempel