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
jobs children metaphor
No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
children women important
Just when I most needed important conversation, a sniff of the man-wide world, that is, at least one brainy companion who could translate my friendly language into his tongue of undying carnal love, I was forced to lounge in our neighborhood park, surrounded by children.
baby children crazy
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.
children chinese littles
Well, you have children so you know: little children little troubles, big children, big troubles - it's a saying in Yiddish. Maybe the Chinese said it too.
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.
children parks pressure
In the park I met other women and I started to get interested in their lives. I developed a lot of pressure to talk about women's lives, and children's lives, too. Children interest me tremendously.
accurate becomes definition developed less moves poetry speaking
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.
felt lived poetry saying
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.
anybody class generally interested work
What I generally tell a class is that if you're not interested in anybody else's work but your own, take another class.
average education goes good people start trouble turns work
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.
opportunity people relationship
A relationship with young people is very important to me. It's important to have a sense of what's going on in their world and not just in my own. So the opportunity teaching provides is a gift.
people
You have to really understand how people speak, and you have to reconstruct it... Most pleasure in writing, you know, is in inventing.
dreams life minute whatever
Whatever you do, life don't stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.
building drops early moment noble presence rage resentment second slowly wave women worried
I was a woman writing at the early moment when small drops of worried resentment and noble rage were secretly, slowly building into the second wave of the women's movement. I didn't know my small-drop presence or usefulness in this accumulation.