Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life. Grace Paley More Quotes by Grace Paley More Quotes From Grace Paley That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality. Grace Paley heartbreakingbookreality Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that's who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration that's my old man across the yard he's talking to the meter reader he's telling him the world's sad story how electricity is oil or uranium and so forth I tell my grandson run over to your grandpa ask him to sit beside me for a minute I am suddenly exhausted by my desire to kiss his sweet explaining lips. Grace Paley summerrunningsweet 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 libraryhusbandyears The wrong word is like a lie jammed inside the story. Grace Paley wrong-wordsstorieslying 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 vocabularyrealwriting There is a long time in me between knowing and telling. Grace Paley long-timeknowinglong You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else. Grace Paley writingneeds I've started many novels, and they all ended on page seven. Grace Paley sevenpagesnovel If you're feminist, it means that you've noticed that male ownership of the direction of female lives has been the order of the day for a few thousand years, and it isn't natural. Grace Paley ordermeanyears 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. Grace Paley gamesfeetmen Waves, once they land on the beach, are not reversible. Grace Paley wavelandbeach There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it. Grace Paley storiesbloodpeople In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty. Grace Paley rewardslife-islong 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. Grace Paley chineselittleschildren I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty. Grace Paley writingfictionpast When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry. Grace Paley couplewritingkids In the park I met other women and I started to get interested in their lives. I developed a lot of pressure to talk about women's lives, and children's lives, too. Children interest me tremendously. Grace Paley parkspressurechildren Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don't stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream. Grace Paley know-yourselfdreamhoney I didn't intend to become a short-story writer. I became one because I finished a couple of short stories and realized that's what I wanted to do and could do with children and with all the other things in my life. Grace Paley story-writerscouplechildren 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. Grace Paley pressurewantart
