Quotes from Grace Paley

Oh no," she says. Soft because I am the older one, but very strong. (I've noticed it. All of a sudden they look at you, and then it comes to them, young people, they are bound to outlast you, so they temper up their icy steel and stare into about an inch away from you a lot. Have you noticed it?) At

Happy!" He leaned over the rail and tried to hold her eyes. But that is hard to do, for eyes are born dodgers and know a whole circumference of ways out of a bad spot. "Faith in the Afternoon

She put her two hands over her ribs to hold her heart in place and also out of modesty to quiet its immodest thud.

The whole meaning of my life, which was jammed until midnight with fifteen different jobs and places, was writing. It took me a long time to know that, but I know it now.

In a way he was lucky. He was a member of a generation that thought it was a good, even joyous, political idea to put its brains, energy, labor at the service of the people.

Rosie, ah Rosie," dedi bana bir gün. "Gül yüzündeki saatten anlad???m kadar?yla, otuzuna gelmiÅŸ olmal?s?n." (s. 17)

My daughter has pointed out that there were not enough lovejobs to go around in this new world. In any event, I probably learned tolerance, maybe even literary affection for the person in the wrong historical moment, living such long, never to be mediate wars with other sufferers.

Despite no education, Mrs. Finn always is more in charge of word meanings than I am. She is especially in charge of Good and Bad. My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

retrospective smartness

Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.

There is a long time in me between knowing and telling.

The only recognizable feature of hope is action.

You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.

That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.

Write what will stop your breath if you don't write.

Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

You write from what you know but you write into what you don't know.

Women should stick together. Didn't you learn anything yet?

I go through a story for lies. I might discover the lie of trying to show off. Sometimes they're lies of character. Sometimes they are lies of writing the most beautiful sentence in the world that has nothing to do with the story.

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.

We are in the hands of men whose power and wealth have separated them from the reality of daily life and from the imagination. We are right to be afraid.

The wrong word is like a lie jammed inside the story.

To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.