Quote

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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Grace Paley
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: December 11
Died: 2007
Died: August 21
Activist
Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Least
Companion
Lounge
Language
Neighborhood
Sniff
Women
Forced
Undying
Children
Friendly
Carnal
Important
Tongue
Park
Men
Wide
Surrounded
Love
Conversation
Translate
World
Needed
Parks
Brainy

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My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I write for the still, small possibility of justice.
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Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
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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.
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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.
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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
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I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.
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Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.
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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
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It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
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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.
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I've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven.
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Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
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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.
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That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.
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