What is remembered is what becomes reality.

- Patricia Hampl

Poverty didn't necessarily engender an envy of wealth; sometimes it might beget a passion for decency.

- Patricia Hampl

I come from people who have always been polite enough to feel that nothing has ever happened to them.

- Patricia Hampl

The artist's work, it is sometimes said, is to celebrate. But really that is not so; it is to express wonder. And something terrible resides at the h…

- Patricia Hampl

We do not, after all, simply have experience; we are entrusted with it. We must do something--make something--with it. A story, we sense is the only …

- Patricia Hampl

Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow--or kneel or get knocked down--to the fact that you are going to write …

- Patricia Hampl

People come and go in life, but they never leave your dreams. Once they're in your subconscious, they are immortal.

- Patricia Hampl

We only store in memory images of value. To write about one's life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical.

- Patricia Hampl

I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.

- Patricia Hampl