Grace Paley Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.

  Grace Paley

  Long, Erotic, Mind

  Grace Paley (2014). “The Collected Stories”, p.205, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• We write about what we don't know about what we know.

  Grace Paley

  Writing, Knows

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• …I go through a story for lies. I might discover the lie of trying to show off. Sometimes they’re lies of character. Sometimes they are lies of writing the most beautiful sentence in the world that has nothing to do with the story.

  Grace Paley

  Beautiful, Lying, Writing

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• My job is to get people to write something truthful, something about truth and beauty - wherever they are - and to understand how literature is made. And then if they become great writers, that's great, and probably has nothing to do with me.

  Grace Paley

  Jobs, Writing, People

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• But what's a writer for? The whole point is to put yourself into other lives, other heads-writers have always done that. If you screw up, so someone will tell you, that's all.

  Grace Paley

  Screw Ups, Done, Screws

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• I loved the comradeship of the sixties and the seventies, and I still maintain friendships with the people I worked with then - the ones that are still alive. That's one of the great gifts of our political movements, great friendships . . . and also a few enmities.

  Grace Paley

  People, Political, Movement

  7 Copy quote

• To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.

  Grace Paley

  Mean, Modest

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• I lived in a house in the East Bronx, a totally Jewish neighborhood on East 172nd Street. You didn't see Christians much, although one lived next door. We thought they were kind of a minority.

  Grace Paley

  Christian, Doors, House

  14 Copy quote

• To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

  Grace Paley

  Writing, Night, Thinking

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• If you're old and you're healthy and you're active - I don't mean you have to be politically active - if you remain interested in other people and the world, then you live as well as your health will allow.

  Grace Paley

  Mean, People, Healthy

  9 Copy quote

• Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that's who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration that's my old man across the yard he's talking to the meter reader he's telling him the world's sad story how electricity is oil or uranium and so forth I tell my grandson run over to your grandpa ask him to sit beside me for a minute I am suddenly exhausted by my desire to kiss his sweet explaining lips.

  Grace Paley

  Summer, Running, Sweet

  Grace Paley (2016). “Begin Again: Poems by Gracey Paley”, p.199, Hachette UK

  21 Copy quote

• I liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.

  Grace Paley

  Class, People

  10 Copy quote

• Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.

  Grace Paley

  People, Language, Sometimes

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• I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified. He said, What? What life? No life of mine.

  Grace Paley

  Husband, Years, Library

  Grace Paley (2014). “The Collected Stories”, p.129, Macmillan

  58 Copy quote

• You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.

  Grace Paley

  Writing, Needs

  "Taking Risks: The Writer as Effective Teacher" by Nina Darnton, www.nytimes.com. April 13, 1986.

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• I believe in a kind of fidelity to your own early ideas; it's a kind of antagonism in me to prevailing fads.

  Grace Paley

  Believe, Ideas, Fads

  Grace Paley, Gerhard Bach, Blaine H. Hall (1997). “Conversations with Grace Paley”, p.69, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Waves, once they land on the beach, are not reversible.

  Grace Paley

  Beach, Land, Wave

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• If you want to do things, do things.

  Grace Paley

  Want, Ifs

  Grace Paley (2014). “The Collected Stories”, p.29, Macmillan

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• Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.

  Grace Paley

  Optimistic, Views, World

  Grace Paley (2014). “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories”, p.174, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• Write from what you know into what you don't know.

  Grace Paley

  Writing, Crafts, Knows

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• Hindsight, usually looked down upon, is probably as valuable as foresight, since it does include a few facts.

  Grace Paley

  Doe, Facts, Hindsight

  Grace Paley (2017). “A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry”, p.158, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

  Grace Paley

  Good Life, Survival, Peculiar

  Grace Paley (2014). “The Collected Stories”, p.63, Macmillan

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• The word career is a divisive word. It's a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life.

  Grace Paley

  Careers, Normal, Divides

  Grace Paley, Gerhard Bach, Blaine H. Hall (1997). “Conversations with Grace Paley”, p.228, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I should have written more. I should have written more during the period when I just liked so much doing the political work in the streets.

  Grace Paley

  Should Have, Political, Periods

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• In the park I met other women and I started to get interested in their lives. I developed a lot of pressure to talk about women's lives, and children's lives, too. Children interest me tremendously.

  Grace Paley

  Children, Parks, Pressure

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