51 quotes
He settles in the kitchen because the children are asleep all over the rest of the house. I unknot his tie and offer him a cold sandwich. He raps my backside, paying attention to the bounce. I walk around him as though he were a Maypole, kissing as I go.
The Little Disturbances of Man (1959)
I write about things I don’t know all that well just to try and understand them. The act of writing is an investigative, learning act.
with Boston Review (1976)
art comes from constant mental harassment.
with The Paris Review (1992)
Peter sighed. He turned the palms of his hands up as though to guess at rain. Anna knew him, theme and choreography. The sunshiny spring afternoon seeped through his fingers. He looked up at the witnessing heavens to keep what he could. He dropped his arms and let the rest go.
The Little Disturbances of Man (1959)
Tillie Olsen and I didn’t know it, but we were part of a movement.
with Poets & Writers (2008)
People move around too much, and they become afraid to speak their own language. (1980)
Conversations with Grace Paley (1978)
By in love she meant the acuteness of the heart at the sudden sight of a particular person or the way over a couple of years of interested friendship one is suddenly stunned by the lungs' longing for more and more breath in the presence of that friend
Midrash on happiness (1990)
[Wild] with a dream of wildness.
children’s writing is so often so beautiful, because it’s so close to their own true tongues. On the other hand, it’s very boring because they have no experience in life.
with Boston Review (1976)
what art is about-and this is what justice is about, although you'll have your own interpretations-is the illumination of what isn't known, the lighting up of what is under a rock, of what has been hidden.
Of Poetry and Women and the World (1986)
I was happy, but I am now in possession of knowledge that this is wrong. Happiness isn't so bad for a woman. She gets fatter, she gets older, she could lie down, nuzzling a regiment of men and little kids, she could just die of the pleasure. But men are different, they have to own money, or they have to be famous, or everybody on the block has too look up to them from the cellar stairs.
The Little Disturbances of Man (1959)