Grace Paley

"In no time at all his cheerful face appeared at the door of the spring dusk. In the street among peaceable strangers he did a handstand. Then easy and impervious, in full control, he cartwheeled eastw…"

"I sighed in and I groaned out, so as to melt a certain pain around my heart. A steel ring like arthritis, at my age."

"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."

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

"No, George said, you don’t understand. The pinball machine--any pinball machine you play in any penny arcade--is so remarkable, so fine, so shrewdly threaded. It is already beautiful in necessity and …"

"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."

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

"It’s hard to stand behind a people and culture in revolutionary transition when you are constantly worried about their irreplaceable and breakable artifacts."