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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

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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.
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I liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.
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It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
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My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.
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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
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The women's movement was coming, but I didn't know it in 1956-1957, when I began to write.
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A joke is necessary at this time.
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You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.
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Every time you finish something ... you figure you've finally learned to write, right? Then you start something else and it turns out you haven't. You have learned how to write that story, or that book, but you haven't learned how to write the next one.
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I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
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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.
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Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.
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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
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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.
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I am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.
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I really believe one of the jobs of a writer is to stretch as far as you can into other voices.
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If you want to do things, do things.
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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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As an older person, I do feel an obligation to tell the story about what was really happening in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, as I saw it.
Grace Paley