Grace Paley Quotes

I wrote as a teenager, and once I started acting, you know, you're learning lines, you're doing other people's words, it takes up a lot of time. Especially if you're dedicated to what you're doing, you're trying to do a decent job at it. But I would have said to myself, "Write more, please."

I always wrote little things when I was younger. My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations.

At the end of the day, I want to be known for my ability to create life from words.

I always loved writing, be it creative writing for school or just poetry. I just loved writing, and in college, I started really trying to write songs and was copying other artists, just to figure it out - but I think freshman year of high school is when I realized, 'I want to be a writer. I have something to say.'

I'm constantly creating and writing.

I didn't intend to become a short-story writer. I became one because I finished a couple of short stories and realized that's what I wanted to do and could do with children and with all the other things in my life.

Returning to writing fiction after 13 years away from it. Returning to the rootstock of my whole life as a writer. It's what I had wanted to be for my entire life, since I can remember, since my particular time immemorial. It's how I got my start as a writer.

I've always been a writer, actually. Not many people assume that, but I kinda keep quiet about anything that I do until I'm ready to show it. It keeps me humble and also makes me work towards a goal.

You have to write the book that wants to be written.

I first tried a novel when I was 14. First finished one when I was 16. First started working on stuff that had a chance of being salable in my early 20s, then didn't write much fiction at all because I was in grad school.

I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.

As my kid gets a little bit older, if I feel like I have a little bit more time on my hands, I'd like to get more into developing ideas and writing things.

I'm more interested in writing than in performing.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.

I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something - no, maybe junior - and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

I started out as a writer. Poetry and prose and also kind of satirical David Sedaris-esque stuff.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.

It's no coincidence that I began writing the day my daughter started school. I knew everything I knew before I began to write, but I was raising two children and didn't have the time to get to the typewriter.

I've written a lot of prose. I just haven't published it.

I'm one of those sad cases who've never wanted to be anything but a writer. I started writing my first novel when I was five years old. I have no idea what it was about, but I do remember spending considerable time trying to get the title right, though this had more to do with crayon colour than scansion.