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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
Return
Moment
Moments
Reality
Book
Heartbreaking
Finish
Forced
Amazing

More quotes by 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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To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
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Art's too long and life's too short.
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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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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
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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.
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Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now - solar, wind - for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.
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I write for the still, small possibility of justice.
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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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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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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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
Grace Paley
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I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified. He said, What? What life? No life of mine.
Grace Paley
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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.
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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Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
Grace Paley
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If you want to do things, do things.
Grace Paley