Quote

I am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.

Grace Paley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Grace Paley
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: December 11
Died: 2007
Died: August 21
Activist
Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Interested
Bigs
Write
Writing
Trying
People
Academic
Background
Backgrounds

More quotes by Grace Paley

Image
I don't have any degrees. I went to Hunter College one year and New York University another year. It's just on the basis of my books that I've been hired at any of the places I've been.
Grace Paley
Image
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
Image
To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
Grace Paley
Image
To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
Grace Paley
Image
No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
Grace Paley
Image
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
Image
You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
Grace Paley
Image
Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.
Grace Paley
Image
Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
Grace Paley
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven.
Grace Paley
Image
Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?
Grace Paley
Image
The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
Grace Paley
Image
It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
Grace Paley
Image
You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.
Grace Paley
Image
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
Image
A joke is necessary at this time.
Grace Paley
Image
I really believe one of the jobs of a writer is to stretch as far as you can into other voices.
Grace Paley
Image
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.
Grace Paley