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
real destiny deserve
Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.
action features
The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
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.
beautiful lying character
…I go through a story for lies. I might discover the lie of trying to show off. Sometimes they’re lies of character. Sometimes they are lies of writing the most beautiful sentence in the world that has nothing to do with the story.
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.