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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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Grace Paley
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: December 11
Died: 2007
Died: August 21
Activist
Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Littles
Little
Yiddish
Wells
Troubles
Well
Chinese
Children
Saying
Trouble
Maybe
Bigs

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When you have a peace movement that has an actual war, it's different from one that has wars that our country is not totally involved in. During the war in Vietnam, and to a lesser degree the wars in Central America where our country was directly involved, it was easier to organize.
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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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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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For me, the meaning of life is the next generation.
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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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It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
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Art's too long and life's too short.
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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.
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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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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.
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Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
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I liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.
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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.
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There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it.
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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.
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I am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.
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I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
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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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