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I've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven.

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
Ended
Page
Pages
Seven
Novel
Started
Many
Novels

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.
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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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No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
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.
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Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
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We write about what we don't know about what we know.
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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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Art's too long and life's too short.
Grace Paley
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I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.
Grace Paley
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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
Grace Paley
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To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
Grace Paley
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Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
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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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