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Authors:

Grace Paley quotes

American Writer December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007

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Quotes

Edie didn't budge. She leaned her chin on her knees and felt sad. She was a big reader too, but she liked THE BOBBSEY TWINS or HONEY BUNCH AT THE SEASHORE. She loved that nice family life. She tried to live it in the three rooms on the fourth floor. Sometimes she called her father Dad, or even Father, which surprised him. Who? he asked. Grace Paley
The only thing you should have to do is find work you love to do. And I can't imagine living without having loved a person. A man, in my case. It could be a woman, but whatever. I think, what I always tell kids when they get out of class and ask, 'What should I do now?' I always say, 'Keep a low overhead. You're not going to make a lot of money.' And the next thing I say: 'Don't live with a person who doesn't respect your work.' That's the most important thing—that's more important than the... Grace Paley
I drank a little California Mountain Red at home and thought--why not--wherever you turn someone is shouting give me liberty of I give you death. Perfectly sensible, thing-owning, Church-fearing neighbours flop their hands over their ears at the sound of a siren to keep fallout from taking hold of their internal organs. You have to be cockeyed to love, and blind in order to look out the window at your own ice-cold street. Grace Paley
it is possible with only a little extra anguish to live in this world at absolute [minimum?] loving brainy sexual energetic redeemed Grace Paley
Grace Paley quote: "All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it..."
All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar. Grace Paley
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. Grace Paley
Grace Paley quote: "The word career is a divisive word. It's a word that divides..."
The word career is a divisive word. It's a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life. Grace Paley
Grace Paley quote: "Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life."
Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life. Grace Paley
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. Grace Paley
Here I am in the garden laughingan old woman with heavy breastsand a nicely mapped facehow did this happenwell that's who I wanted to beat last a womanin the old style sittingstout thighs apart undera big skirt grandchild slidingon off my lap a pleasantsummer perspirationthat's my old man across the yardhe's talking to the meter readerhe's telling him the world's sad storyhow electricity is oil or uraniumand so forth I tell my grandsonrun over to your grandpa ask himto sit beside me for a... Grace Paley
At this very moment, the thumb of Ricardo's hovering shadow jabbed her in her left eye, revealing for all the world the shallowness of her water table. Rice could have been planted at that instant on the terraces of her flesh and sprouted in strength and beauty in the floods that overwhelmed her from that moment on through all the afternoon. Grace Paley
Near home I ran through our park, where I had aired my children on weekends and late-summer afternoons. I stopped at the northeast playground, where I met a dozen young mothers intelligently handling their little ones. In order to prepare them, meaning no harm, I said, In fifteen years, you girls will be like me, wrong in everything Grace Paley
…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. Grace Paley
Grace Paley quote: "That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and..."
That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality. Grace Paley
Grace Paley quote: "I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a..."
I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses. Grace Paley

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