A Grace Paley Reader Quotes

“The whole meaning of my life, which was jammed until midnight with fifteen different jobs and places, was writing. It took me a long time to know that, but I know it now.”
― Grace Paley, A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry

“People do want to be young and beautiful. When they meet in the street, male or female, if they're getting older they look at each other's face a little ashamed. It's clear they want to say, Excuse me, I didn't mean to draw attention to mortality and gravity all at once. I didn't want to remind you, my dear friend, of our coming eviction, first from liveliness, then from life. To which, most of the time, the friend's eyes will courteously reply, My dear, it's nothing at all. I hardly noticed.”
― Grace Paley, A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry

“She put her two hands over her ribs to hold her heart in place and also out of modesty to quiet its immodest thud.”
― Grace Paley, A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry

“Responsibility It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman It is the responsibility of the poet to stand on street corners giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets also leaflets they can hardly bear to look at because of the screaming rhetoric It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy   to hang out and prophesy It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C and buckwheat fields and army camps It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman It is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth to power as the Quakers say It is the poet’s responsibility to learn the truth from the powerless It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no freedom without justice and this means economic justice and love justice It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it on in the way storytellers decant the story of life There is no freedom without fear and bravery   there is no freedom unless earth and air and water continue and children also continue It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman   to keep an eye on this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be listened to this time”
― Grace Paley, A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry