Tanya

“time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible.”
― Italo Calvino, The Complete Cosmicomics

“A famous artist is approached by a student. "You don't remember me," the student says correctly, "but years ago you said something that changed my life. You said, 'Photography is death.' After that," says the student, "I threw out my camera. I began again. I want to thank you for changing my life."

"Leave me alone," says the artist. "Photography is life.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“The psychic said I would have two children. This makes me shake my head. I know you are not supposed to leave a baby alone. Not even for a minute. But after a while I think, What could happen to a baby in the time it would take for me to run to the corner for a cappuccino on the go? So I do it, I run to the corner and get the cappuccino. And then I think how close the store is that is having the sale on leather gloves. Really, I think, it is only a couple of blocks. So I go to the store and buy the gloves. And it hits me--how long it has been since I have gone to a movie. A matinee! So I do that, too. I go to a movie. And when I come out of the theater it occurs to me that it has been years since I have been to Paris. Years. So I go to Paris, and come back three months later and find a skeleton in the crib.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“Mrs. Linden was beautiful in spirit and in fact. Her wish, she told her daughter, was to be a beautiful woman and surprise people because she was a beautiful woman who was kind.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories