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If you want to do things, do things.

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
Things

More quotes by Grace Paley

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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.
Grace Paley
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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
Grace Paley
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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
Grace Paley
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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.
Grace Paley
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I liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.
Grace Paley
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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
Grace Paley
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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
Grace Paley
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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.
Grace Paley
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To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
Grace Paley
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You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.
Grace Paley
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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.
Grace Paley
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I am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.
Grace Paley
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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.
Grace Paley
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I do lots of reading and speaking at many universities about literature and also about politics, which is as much a part of my life as the literature.
Grace Paley
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The women's movement was coming, but I didn't know it in 1956-1957, when I began to write.
Grace Paley
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Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
Grace Paley
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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.
Grace Paley
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I've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven.
Grace Paley
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Art's too long and life's too short.
Grace Paley
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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.
Grace Paley