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

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
Write
Writing

More quotes by 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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A joke is necessary at this time.
Grace Paley
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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.
Grace Paley
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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
Grace Paley
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Waves, once they land on the beach, are not reversible.
Grace Paley
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If you want to do things, do things.
Grace Paley
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Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
Grace Paley
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It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
Grace Paley
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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
Grace Paley
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My mother went to demonstrations. I remember her going to a big demonstration for Earl Brower and she came home crying and said the Communists were very mean and booed their people. I remember feeling sad at her feeling sad.
Grace Paley
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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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Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.
Grace Paley
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I really believe one of the jobs of a writer is to stretch as far as you can into other voices.
Grace Paley
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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
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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
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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
Grace Paley
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You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.
Grace Paley
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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
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I write for the still, small possibility of justice.
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