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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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Grace Paley
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: December 11
Died: 2007
Died: August 21
Activist
Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Forced
Amazing
Return
Moment
Moments
Reality
Book
Heartbreaking
Finish

More quotes by Grace Paley

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For me, the meaning of life is the next generation.
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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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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.
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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
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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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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.
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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.
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I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
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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.
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No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
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A joke is necessary at this time.
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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
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What we owe men is some freedom from their part in a murderous game in which they kick each other to death with one foot, bracing themselves on our various comfortable places with the other.
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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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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
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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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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I write for the still, small possibility of justice.
Grace Paley
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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.
Grace Paley