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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.

— Grace Paley with Boston Review (1976)

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Children

More quotes by Grace Paley

With a few grasping, kind words and a modern gimmick, she hoped to breathe eternity into a mortal matter, love.

The Little Disturbances of Man (1959)

I brought up lonesomeness again, and not being understood at all except by some women everybody hated.

The Little Disturbances of Man (1959)

Plot, the absolute line between two points which I've always despised. Not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974)

For happiness, she also required work to do in this world and bread on the table.

Midrash on happiness (1990)

It is still hard to believe that a man who sends out the Ten Commandments every year for a Christmas card can be so easy buttoning and unbuttoning.

The Little Disturbances of Man (1959)

All Grace Paley quotes →

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Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me.

L. Frank Baum Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)

So what if a kid dies? God will take care of him.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds (1916)

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Thomas Szasz The Second Sin (1973)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Grace Paley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.