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

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Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
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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 write for the still, small possibility of justice.
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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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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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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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If you're old and you're healthy and you're active - I don't mean you have to be politically active - if you remain interested in other people and the world, then you live as well as your health will allow.
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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
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Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?
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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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A joke is necessary at this time.
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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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No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
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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've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven.
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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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Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.
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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 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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