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Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.

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
Language
Sometimes
Love
People
Already
Saying

More quotes by Grace Paley

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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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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.
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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.
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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?
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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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Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.
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No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
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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.
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Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
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I've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven.
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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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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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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
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My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.
Grace Paley
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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.
Grace Paley
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The word career is a divisive word. It's a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life.
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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.
Grace Paley
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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
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