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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

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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
Really
Writer
Good
Hear
Talkers
Would
Read
Assumed
People
Family
Speakers
Tell
Russian
Didn
Jews
Stories
Jew
Important
Soon

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
Grace Paley
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Waves, once they land on the beach, are not reversible.
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.
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I believe in a kind of fidelity to your own early ideas it's a kind of antagonism in me to prevailing fads.
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.
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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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Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.
Grace Paley
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I write for the still, small possibility of justice.
Grace Paley
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We write about what we don't know about what we know.
Grace Paley
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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
Grace Paley
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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
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 was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
Grace Paley
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To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
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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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
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Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.
Grace Paley