Grace Paley
Grace Paley
Grace Paleywas an American short story writer, poet, teacher, and political activist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth11 December 1922
CountryUnited States of America
careers normal divides
The word career is a divisive word. It's a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life.
good-life survival interest-in-life
All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.
justice underdog world
Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.
writing people trying
I am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.
done screw-ups screws
But what's a writer for? The whole point is to put yourself into other lives, other heads-writers have always done that. If you screw up, so someone will tell you, that's all.
writing people sometimes
People will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women IS politics.
together sticks should
Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?
art want pressure
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.
lying writing dope
I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing. ... It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to any work.
mean people healthy
If you're old and you're healthy and you're active - I don't mean you have to be politically active - if you remain interested in other people and the world, then you live as well as your health will allow.
couple children stories
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.
jobs writing people
My job is to get people to write something truthful, something about truth and beauty - wherever they are - and to understand how literature is made. And then if they become great writers, that's great, and probably has nothing to do with me.
book writing stories
Every time you finish something ... you figure you've finally learned to write, right? Then you start something else and it turns out you haven't. You have learned how to write that story, or that book, but you haven't learned how to write the next one.
world forget sometimes
Sometimes, walking with a friend, I forget the world.