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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
Wells
Troubles
Well
Chinese
Children
Saying
Trouble
Maybe
Bigs
Littles
Little
Yiddish

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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
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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 liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.
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To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
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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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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.
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Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
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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 don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.
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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
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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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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.
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Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?
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I've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven.
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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.
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