Quote

Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.

Grace Paley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Grace Paley
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: December 11
Died: 2007
Died: August 21
Activist
Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Write
Writing
Breath
Breaths
Stop

More quotes by Grace Paley

Image
I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
Grace Paley
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We write about what we don't know about what we know.
Grace Paley
Image
Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
Grace Paley
Image
You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
Grace Paley
Image
Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.
Grace Paley
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.
Grace Paley
Image
To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
Grace Paley
Image
That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.
Grace Paley
Image
To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
Grace Paley
Image
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.
Grace Paley
Image
A joke is necessary at this time.
Grace Paley
Image
Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.
Grace Paley
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
Grace Paley
Image
In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
Grace Paley