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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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Grace Paley
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: December 11
Died: 2007
Died: August 21
Activist
Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Streets
Written
Political
Work
Much
Liked
Period
Periods

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Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
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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.
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A joke is necessary at this time.
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You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.
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I write for the still, small possibility of justice.
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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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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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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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Well, you have children so you know: little children little troubles, big children, big troubles - it's a saying in Yiddish. Maybe the Chinese said it too.
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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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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.
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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 liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.
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Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
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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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If you want to do things, do things.
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Art's too long and life's too short.
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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.
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