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Quote by Amy Hempel

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Reasons to Live

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Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel

Amy Hempel is an American writer renowned for her concise and profound short stories. Her work often delves into themes of interpersonal relationships, loneliness, and death, earning her acclaim from readers and critics alike. more

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“Sandra Bullock is an unmatched charm powerhouse, and I feel like nobody acknowledges that anymore because she made too many comedies for women, and men can’t stand that. Watch Sandra Bullock in action. Watch Sandra Bullock in Speed and then tell me you don’t want to frame your spouse for a crime so you can marry her instead! Watch While You Were Sleeping and try not to send Sandra Bullock a thank-you card with $4,000 inside. I DARE YOU.”

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“I know that gen Z has it tough—they’re losing their proms and graduations to the quarantine, they’re on deck to bear the full brunt of climate catastrophe, and they’re inheriting a carcass of a society that’s been fattened up and picked clean by the billionaire class, leaving them with virtually no shot at a life without crushing financial and existential anxiety, let alone any fantasy of retiring from their thankless toil or leaving anything of value to their own children. That’s bad. BUT, counterpoint! Millennials have to deal with a bunch of that same stuff, kind of, PLUS we had to be teenagers when American Pie came out!... American Pie absolutely captivated a generation because my generation is tacky as hell. “I have a hot girlfriend but she doesn’t want to have sex” was an entire genre of movies in the ’90s. In the ’90s, people loved it when things were “raunchy” (ew!). Every guy at my high school wanted to be Stifler! Can you imagine what that kind of an environment does to a person? To be of the demographic that has a Ron Burgundy quote for every occasion, without the understanding that Ron Burgundy is a satire? This is why we have Jenny McCarthy, I’m pretty sure, and, by extension, the great whooping cough revival of 2014. Thanks a lot, jocks!”

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“Uhhhhh, okay, let’s fast-forward. This is taking forever. The T. rex gets out. The lawyer tries to hide in a toilet house, but T. rex finds him immediately because this is the ’90s, so T. rexes hate lawyers. Newman gets eaten by some fancy lads (GOOD), while everyone else runs around screaming, or holds perfectly still, depending on their prior knowledge of dinosaur eyeballs... Richard Attenborough is making a speech about fleas. He just wanted to make something that wasn’t an illusion, you know? “I wanted to show them something that wasn’t an illusion. Something that was real. Something they could see and touch.” And get dismembered by.”

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“Mostly, though, I’m sure she breathed deeply and smiled, for him, for years, because she loved him, and because she took a vow—and, hey, he forgave her for the way she tended to nag. Night after night, she lost him to the lab, the empty bed cold beside her, but this was his thing, and she loved him, and he promised her it would be “worth it.” WELL, GUESS WHAT, WAYNE? IT HAS NOT BEEN WORTH IT. YOU SHRUNK THE KIDS. YOU SHRUNK ’EM. And now, I’m sorry, you want me to what? Climb into this harness so you can dangle me over our lawn with a magnifying glass in hopes of saving our only two living children—whom I fed with my blood and pushed out of my body and WHOM YOU SHRUNK—from being killed by a scorpion?? Why do we even have scorpions in our lawn, Wayne? WHERE THE FUCK DO WE LIVE????”

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“Relative to other Harry Potter people, I’m in it medium. As it is for, I assume, plenty of other adults with emotional problems, Harry Potter is a reliable security blanket for me—during challenging periods in my life, listening to the (Jim Dale) audiobooks has been the only thing that gets me to sleep. It’s low-stakes and goofy, but also high-stakes and I care about the characters, plus there’s magic. Those are all of my needs. However, the best thing about Harry Potter, the thing that keeps me hooked year after year, is that the internal logic barely hangs together. None of it makes any sense! The best thing about Harry Potter is that I hate it!!!”

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“It is madness, by the way, that every director does not do whatever it takes—financially, spiritually, erotically—to put Nicolas Cage in everything they make. He is the only person who ever does anything interesting in any movie. Yeah, I said it! Do I mean it? I don’t know. But I do know that sometimes I forget about Nicolas Cage for weeks or even years at a time, and then I watch a Nicolas Cage movie again and it feels like coming home—to a house where your dad is cocaine and your mom licks your face if you’ve been good AND if you’ve been bad. I’m happy there!”

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“Look. Is The Rock a perfect movie? No. But is it a perfect movie? Maybe! Just describing the plot of The Rock is a lush, lip-smacking thrill, like a piece of bacon that is all fatty rind, like a bowl of Lucky Charms that is all marshmallows—so many elements that could each, alone, be too much, here combined into one film that somehow works, one great, baroque cinnamon roll that is all the middle of the cinnamon roll, The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones, a duck-billed platypus, a place beyond decadence, foie gras on your burger, everything you want and nothing you don’t and then some more. Nicolas Cage, an unchained freak; Sean Connery, virtuosically hammy; Ed Harris, a haunted prince going down with his ship; antihero vs. antihero vs. antihero vs. the president; and gruesome chemical weapons and a heist and a mutiny and a double mutiny and family drama and Alcatraz and mine carts and fighter jets and flames and a rock, stalwart against the sea. All that, but with none of the septic irony, the relentless self-conscious hedging, that infects so much of our lives these days. The Rock does not take one single moment to look you in the eye and say, yes, we know this is a little silly, we are sorry, please know we are cool—there’s no need! The Rock believes in itself, it commits, it is happy to be fun. Coolness is a deadly neurotoxin. Inject The Rock into your heart.”

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