Grace Paley Quotes

People in this world of superficial communication find themselves isolated and lonely and have difficult in talking about personal things that really matter to them.

I don't remember ever feeling lonely; in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my books.

All we really want in life is to connect to other human beings, and when you desperately want to connect physically to one specific human being and you can't? That's something I find compelling.

I really don't like that modern notion of 'I don't need anyone.' I see a lot of young women feeling they have to be that way, they have to be hard, in a way. And what does that bring them? They're just going to be lonesome. They're going to be, at best, lonesome and capable, at worst, lonesome and hard. And is that what we want? No.

I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.

All my life I've been looking for someone intelligent to talk to.

Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.

I was lonelier than I should be, for a woman in love, or half in love.

My children's favorite, and it's funny because they've seen it but they have a difficult time watching it because it's their dad and they make that connection, but Edward Scissorhands is by far my kids' favorite. They just connect with the character, and they see their dad feeling that isolation, that loneliness. He's a tragic character, so I think it's hard for them. They bawl.

I still care for you, you know.. That phrase again. Everyone cares for me. They just don't know how to love me.

Sometimes my hands they don’t feel like my own; I need someone to love, I need someone to hold.

I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There's always going to be a kind of tidal movement back and forth between the two.

It occurred to her suddenly, sharply, that she wanted to be in love... She wanted not to feel so damned alone in the world.

I am thinking of you in my sleepless solitude tonight.

If you have a harem of 40 women, you never get to know any of them very well.

What's a star when his most important fan is missing?

I believe I'm one of the loneliest people in the world.

Dark and lonely. I need somebody to hold me

The prosperous man does not know whether he is loved.

This is about as comforting as a cold brick when you're lonely.

Everyone wants to feel loved, but when all you feel is alone it's tough to accomplish anything else.

I thought that it's so sad there are people who live their entire lives lonely. They die and no one goes to their funeral. I thought about how sad that was and how so many people out there have that path. I know this sounds weird, but if I could go take their bones back to my house and appreciate them for what they are, it would be my way of taking that loneliness away.

Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union

I'd known enough people for every minute of the day, and yet still didn't have anyone as my two a.m.

I was a loner as a child. I had an imaginary friend - I didn't bother with him.