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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.

— Grace Paley The Little Disturbances of Man (1959)

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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)

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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.