Quote

Waves, once they land on the beach, are not reversible.

Grace Paley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Grace Paley
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: December 11
Died: 2007
Died: August 21
Activist
Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Reversible
Waves
Beach
Wave
Land

More quotes by Grace Paley

Image
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
Image
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.
Grace Paley
Image
Art's too long and life's too short.
Grace Paley
Image
I really believe one of the jobs of a writer is to stretch as far as you can into other voices.
Grace Paley
Image
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.
Grace Paley
Image
When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry.
Grace Paley
Image
That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.
Grace Paley
Image
The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
Grace Paley
Image
We write about what we don't know about what we know.
Grace Paley
Image
It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
Grace Paley
Image
To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
Grace Paley
Image
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.
Grace Paley
Image
Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
Grace Paley
Image
Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.
Grace Paley
Image
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.
Grace Paley
Image
I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
Grace Paley
Image
As an older person, I do feel an obligation to tell the story about what was really happening in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, as I saw it.
Grace Paley
Image
My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.
Grace Paley
Image
I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.
Grace Paley
Image
Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
Grace Paley