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

Categorized in : Years Husband Library

'The Immigrant Story,' which took me about twenty-five years to write, was a very simple story, but I couldn't think of how to tell it. Then twenty years after I started it, I found this one page and realized it was going to be the story. That's the only way you get it sometimes.

me you simple sometimes

Writing poetry, which for me was then saying how I felt about this and that, didn't help me to understand the world I lived in.

understand me poetry world

I developed a definition - which I think becomes less and less accurate as poetry moves into the world - that poetry was a way of speaking to the world, but fiction was a way to get the world to speak to me.

me poetry speak world

In prose, I think you sometimes have to write in very plain language, where every line may not seem to be so important, though in all writing every line is important.

think you language sometimes

You have to really understand how people speak, and you have to reconstruct it... Most pleasure in writing, you know, is in inventing.

understand you speak people

That's the trouble with stories. People start out fantastic. You think they're extraordinary, but it turns out as the work goes along, they're just average with a good education.

good you education work