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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.

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
Something
Modest
Means
Mean

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Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don't stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.
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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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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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No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
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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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Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
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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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To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
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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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I really believe one of the jobs of a writer is to stretch as far as you can into other voices.
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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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I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.
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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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I liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.
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A joke is necessary at this time.
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Waves, once they land on the beach, are not reversible.
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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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I am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.
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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