Quote

It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.

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
Stills
Young
Still
Thing
Time
Saves
Terrible
Dies

More quotes by 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
I liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.
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
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
Image
The women's movement was coming, but I didn't know it in 1956-1957, when I began to write.
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
I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.
Grace Paley
Image
If you want to do things, do things.
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
I write for the still, small possibility of justice.
Grace Paley
Image
A joke is necessary at this time.
Grace Paley
Image
That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.
Grace Paley
Image
I'm really sorry for people growing up right now, because they have some cockeyed idea that they can get by with their eyes closed the cane they're tapping is money, and that won't take them in the right direction.
Grace Paley
Image
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.
Grace Paley
Image
I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
Grace Paley
Image
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.
Grace Paley
Image
I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
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
Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.
Grace Paley
Image
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.
Grace Paley