Grace Paley Quotes

The way you get better is putting words on the page and getting them behind you.

It brings me no joy and not enough comfort to dwell too much on things I've said or written or made or worn in the past.

But I had a strong reaction to my first three albums and I struggle with them now, as an adult. It's very much the same as looking at your teenage photos in high school.

I never thought I could write this much and now that it's coming to an end, I feel sad that I have to stop, sort of the way you feel at the end of a really good book and you know you're going to miss the main character. But in this case, the main character is me! Myself. Joe (formerly JoDan) Bunch. —Joe Bunch

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

I'm not sure whether I've been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: 'You can't rewind the movie. I've spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.'

If I had let myself off the hook in college, I could have enjoyed myself a lot more. Knowing that I can't have those years back, I have learned to get the most out of living in the now.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

I can't stand reading anything that I've said.

I think it's natural as you get to the end of your twenties to start thinking about what you could have done differently - whether they went well or whether they went terribly.

The selfish thing about an athlete is you always look at the side of things where you say I could've done that better.

It's hard to watch something you've done many years ago.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I'm in a small way quite proud of some of it - I only wish I'd done more.

I'd love to retouch my whole life.

Every time I sit down to write, I need to commit to a word count goal, otherwise I waste too much time editing and re-editing my previous work, staring dreamily off into space, pretending that I'm thinking profound, poetic thoughts when really I'm just thinking, 'Look at me being a writer! I'm so happy I'm a writer!'

Before I went to jail, I was active in politics as a member of South Africa's leading organization - and I was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think.

The people in 'July, July' do find themselves looking backward, talking to others and to themselves about those over-the-cliff, fork-in-the-road moments in their lives. I imagine this is what must happen at a 30th college reunion.

It's disturbing at my age to look at a young woman's destructive behaviour and hear the echoes of it, of one's own destructiveness in youth.

I regret that I have not written more, shouted louder, and acted out my beliefs.

I suppose I sometimes used to act like I wasn't a human being... Sometimes I look back at myself and remember things I used to say, or my hairstyle, and I cringe.

I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now.

I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things. Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does. Writing provides the solitude necessary to reflect on being in this world.

I always see where I didn't do things the right way. I only see the heavy lifting. That's a bit of my wisdom, if you want to call it that.

I'd be lying if I didn't say there were days when I went back and said, 'I wish I'd done this. I should have done that. I handled this the wrong way.' But it's always in the motivation of getting better. I've never once looked in the mirror and said, 'Oh boy, can't do this one.'

The only joy I had was writing what was. That book was. It no longer amuses me to be all the things I was when I wrote that. But it is my story as I was then.