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I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.

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
Writing
Thirty
Fiction
Write
Didn
Past

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No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
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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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It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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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'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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In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.
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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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A joke is necessary at this time.
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Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
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Art's too long and life's too short.
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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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I believe in a kind of fidelity to your own early ideas it's a kind of antagonism in me to prevailing fads.
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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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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 liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.
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My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.
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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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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 want to do things, do things.
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