Quote

We write about what we don't know about what we know.

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
Write
Writing

More quotes by Grace Paley

Image
I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.
Grace Paley
Image
I did write a number of reports on my political experiences, but there were many omissions, and I feel bad about that because it was work that was interesting and had I written more about it, it could have been useful.
Grace Paley
Image
Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
Grace Paley
Image
No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
Grace Paley
Image
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
Image
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.
Grace Paley
Image
Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
Grace Paley
Image
Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.
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
You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.
Grace Paley
Image
Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.
Grace Paley
Image
You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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
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
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
The women's movement was coming, but I didn't know it in 1956-1957, when I began to write.
Grace Paley
Image
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
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 didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
Grace Paley
Image
There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it.
Grace Paley