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 More Quotes by Grace Paley More Quotes From Grace Paley I'm seventy-five now. I also have the peculiar luck of having a sister and brother who are fourteen and sixteen years older than me. Their health is not good. It couldn't be at that age. But their spirits are. Both my brother and my sister are an example to me. Grace Paley luck brother years I did write a number of reports on my political experiences, but there were many omissions, and I feel bad about that because it was work that was interesting and had I written more about it, it could have been useful. Grace Paley omission writing numbers People say, "Why do you call your kids up, why do you worry like that?" And I say, "I was raised like that." My grandmother looked at my father with the same eyes when he was sixty and she was eighty-five. Grace Paley eye father kids A lot of sad things have happened to my friends' children, people you knew as babies. They've been killed or become crazy or all kinds of tragic things. There are some people whose children haven't talked to them in fifteen years. There's all kind of meshugaas in this world. Grace Paley crazy baby children A joke is necessary at this time. Grace Paley jokes As an older person, I do feel an obligation to tell the story about what was really happening in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, as I saw it. Grace Paley obligation saws stories I don't have any degrees. I went to Hunter College one year and New York University another year. It's just on the basis of my books that I've been hired at any of the places I've been. Grace Paley college new-york book 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. Grace Paley cities water people If I miss anything, it's being able to hang out in the city of New York meeting people and talking to them on the corner. Grace Paley cities new-york talking 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. Grace Paley war country america I do lots of reading and speaking at many universities about literature and also about politics, which is as much a part of my life as the literature. Grace Paley university reading literature Most of the Womens Libbers I knew really didnt want to have a piece of the mens pie. They thought that pie was kind of poisonous, toxic, really full of weapons, poison gases, all kinds of mean junk we didnt even want a slice of. Grace Paley junk pie mean Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world. Grace Paley optimistic views world I often see through things right to the apparition itself. Grace Paley apparitions I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want to do. You don't always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up. Grace Paley lines four writing Art is too long, and life is too short. Grace Paley life-is-too-short long art I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first. Grace Paley plot sound writing To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night. Grace Paley writing night thinking I believe in a kind of fidelity to your own early ideas; it's a kind of antagonism in me to prevailing fads. Grace Paley fads believe ideas This hill crossed with broken pines and maples lumpy with the burial mounds of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane of '38) out of their rotting hearts generations rise trying once more to become the forest just beyond them tall enough to be called trees in their youth like aspen a bouquet of young beech is gathered they still wear last summer's leaves the lightest brown almost translucent how their stubbornness has decorated the winter woods. Grace Paley summer heart spring
