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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
Modest
Means
Mean
Something

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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 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.
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I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.
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For me, the meaning of life is the next generation.
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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
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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.
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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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A joke is necessary at this time.
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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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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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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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In the park I met other women and I started to get interested in their lives. I developed a lot of pressure to talk about women's lives, and children's lives, too. Children interest me tremendously.
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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.
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To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.
Grace Paley
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Waves, once they land on the beach, are not reversible.
Grace Paley
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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
Grace Paley
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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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The women's movement was coming, but I didn't know it in 1956-1957, when I began to write.
Grace Paley
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If you want to do things, do things.
Grace Paley