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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
Needs
Writing
Writer
Else
Become
Nothing
Need

More quotes by Grace Paley

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If you want to do things, do things.
Grace Paley
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I write for the still, small possibility of justice.
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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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Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.
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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 was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
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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.
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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
Grace Paley
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Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
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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A joke is necessary at this time.
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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No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
Grace Paley
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There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it.
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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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My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.
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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Art's too long and life's too short.
Grace Paley
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It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
Grace Paley