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

Grace Paley

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Grace Paley
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: December 11
Died: 2007
Died: August 21
Activist
Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Writer
Else
Become
Nothing
Need
Needs
Writing

More quotes by Grace Paley

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I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
Grace Paley
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When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry.
Grace Paley
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I did write a number of reports on my political experiences, but there were many omissions, and I feel bad about that because it was work that was interesting and had I written more about it, it could have been useful.
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For me, the meaning of life is the next generation.
Grace Paley
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My mother went to demonstrations. I remember her going to a big demonstration for Earl Brower and she came home crying and said the Communists were very mean and booed their people. I remember feeling sad at her feeling sad.
Grace Paley
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Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don't stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.
Grace Paley
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Well, you have children so you know: little children little troubles, big children, big troubles - it's a saying in Yiddish. Maybe the Chinese said it too.
Grace Paley
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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
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I don't have any degrees. I went to Hunter College one year and New York University another year. It's just on the basis of my books that I've been hired at any of the places I've been.
Grace Paley
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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
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Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.
Grace Paley
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Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now - solar, wind - for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.
Grace Paley
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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
Grace Paley
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That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.
Grace Paley
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When you have a peace movement that has an actual war, it's different from one that has wars that our country is not totally involved in. During the war in Vietnam, and to a lesser degree the wars in Central America where our country was directly involved, it was easier to organize.
Grace Paley
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I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing. ... It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to any work.
Grace Paley
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Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.
Grace Paley
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My family were Russian Jews. They got you to read as soon as you could. And then assumed you would read a lot. People didn't really tell stories but they were good talkers. That's important for a writer, to hear speakers.
Grace Paley
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I'm really sorry for people growing up right now, because they have some cockeyed idea that they can get by with their eyes closed the cane they're tapping is money, and that won't take them in the right direction.
Grace Paley
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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
Grace Paley