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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.

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
Features
Hope
Action
Recognizable
Feature

More quotes by Grace Paley

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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.
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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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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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
Grace Paley
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Just when I most needed important conversation, a sniff of the man-wide world, that is, at least one brainy companion who could translate my friendly language into his tongue of undying carnal love, I was forced to lounge in our neighborhood park, surrounded by children.
Grace Paley
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I know I've done good work. I've been very serious about my writing, and I've done the best that I could. But I don't feel that I've done more than I should have. In fact, I've done less than I should have.
Grace Paley
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Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.
Grace Paley
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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
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People will sometimes say, Why don't you write more politics? And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women IS politics.
Grace Paley
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It wasn't until I lived in the countryside that I began to understand the life of the countryside and the people in it and trees and water. Just learning about water is an education for a city person.
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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I do lots of reading and speaking at many universities about literature and also about politics, which is as much a part of my life as the literature.
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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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
Grace Paley
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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
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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
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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My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.
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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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.
Grace Paley