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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.

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
Life
Deserves
Invented
Deserve
Destiny
Open
Everyone
Real

More quotes by 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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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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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.
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That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.
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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.
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Waves, once they land on the beach, are not reversible.
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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Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.
Grace Paley
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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
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Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
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You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.
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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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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
Grace Paley
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Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?
Grace Paley
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Art's too long and life's too short.
Grace Paley
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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
Grace Paley
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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
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I didn't intend. The word intend is the wrong word for what I do. It's just that it's something you do, and you can't not do. If you want to do it, and you don't intend to, you do it anyway. The word intend is wrong. The word pressure is right. It's like any art form.
Grace Paley
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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
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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
Grace Paley