Amy Hempel Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don't get all writerly: 'He opened the door.' There, it's open.

  Amy Hempel

  Writing, Doors, Sometimes

• I know when a story is finished when there is not a single thing more I can think to do to it. And since I know at the start what the last line will be, I know when I've reached that point as logically as I can that it's finished. As for the rewriting-it's not foolproof, of course, but if you're honest about having thought of every possibility and you still come back to what you have, what more can you do?

  Amy Hempel

  Writing, Thinking, Lines

• Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. You are trained to get rid of anything nonessential. You go in, you start writing your article, assuming a person's going to stop reading the minute you give them a reason. So the trick is: don't give them one.

  Amy Hempel

  Reading, Writing, Giving

• I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dogs behavior... But maybe, it’s that they’re dog, and that’s what dogs do.

  Amy Hempel

  Dog, Writing, Numbers

• I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.

  Amy Hempel

  Writing, Stories, Ends

• I started writing by doing small related things but not the thing itself, circling it and getting closer. I had no idea how to write fiction. So I did journalism because there were rules I could learn. You can teach someone to write a news story. They might not write a great one, but you can teach that pretty easily.

  Amy Hempel

  Writing, Ideas, News Stories

• Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.

  Amy Hempel

  Writing, Interesting, Want

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