165 Quotes by Grace Paley

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.

I lived in a house in the East Bronx, a totally Jewish neighborhood on East 172nd Street. You didn’t see Christians much, although one lived next door. We thought they were kind of a minority.

We write about what we don’t know about what we know...

Whatever you do, life don’t stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.

I’m seventy-five now. I also have the peculiar luck of having a sister and brother who are fourteen and sixteen years older than me. Their health is not good. It couldn’t be at that age. But their spirits are. Both my brother and my sister are an example to me.

I’m really sorry for people growing up right now, because they have some cockeyed idea that they can get by with their eyes closed; the cane they’re tapping is money, and that won’t take them in the right direction.

You become a writer because you need to become a writer – nothing else.

The word career is a divisive word. It’s a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life.

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.