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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
Period
Periods
Streets
Written
Political
Work
Much
Liked

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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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A joke is necessary at this time.
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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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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 write any fiction until I was past thirty.
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To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.
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I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing. ... It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to any work.
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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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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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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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The women's movement was coming, but I didn't know it in 1956-1957, when I began to write.
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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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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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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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Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.
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I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
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Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?
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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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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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The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
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