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Quote by Grace Paley

“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.”

Quote by Grace Paley

Author

Grace Paley was an American writer born on December 11, 1922, and passed away on August 22, 2007. Known for her concise language and profound emotional depth, her works primarily focus on family, love, and social issues. more

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“When you think of things that influenced your life, Mother Goose influenced more people than almost any other thing, the rhythms of those poems. Everything after that was a bare imitation of some of those mysterious and materialistic poems.”

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“My family were Russian Jews. They got you to read as soon as you could. And then assumed you would read a lot. People didn't really tell stories but they were good talkers. That's important for a writer, to hear speakers.”

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“To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.”

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“Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.”

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“My mother went to demonstrations. I remember her going to a big demonstration for Earl Brower and she came home crying and said the Communists were very mean and booed their people. I remember feeling sad at her feeling sad.”

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“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.”

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“The women's movement was coming, but I didn't know it in 1956-1957, when I began to write.”

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“I was fortunate that by the time I was born, there were a lot of comforts and at the same time I lived in a neighborhood where it was brought to my eyes every single day that people didn't live like me. Every day I knew that many of my friends "got relief." That was important in my thinking about the world, thinking that not everybody lived that way.”

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“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.”

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