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

More quotes by Grace Paley

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Art's too long and life's too short.
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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Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.
Grace Paley
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We write about what we don't know about what we know.
Grace Paley
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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
Grace Paley
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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
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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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 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
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When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry.
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
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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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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
Grace Paley
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Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.
Grace Paley
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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.
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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Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.
Grace Paley
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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
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 was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
Grace Paley