You come to doing what you do by not being able to do something. Grace Paley More Quotes by Grace Paley More Quotes From Grace Paley 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 omissionwritingnumbers 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 eyefatherkids 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 crazybabychildren 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 obligationsawsstories 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 collegenew-yorkbook 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 citieswaterpeople 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 citiesnew-yorktalking 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 warcountryamerica 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 universityreadingliterature 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 junkpiemean Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world. Grace Paley optimisticviewsworld 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 linesfourwriting Art is too long, and life is too short. Grace Paley life-is-too-shortlongart I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first. Grace Paley plotsoundwriting To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night. Grace Paley writingnightthinking 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 fadsbelieveideas 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 summerheartspring That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality. Grace Paley heartbreakingbookreality
