people think that they have to use their brains to figure out how best to retaliate or how best to make war. And it brings us to total hopelessness. … - Grace Paley

Concentration is really a problem for me. To seize something. But when I really have a story I'm working on, I can work on it sitting in a train, going to Washington, any place, anywhere. It's totally absorbing. (1980)

People like myself who must begin again and again in order to get anywhere at all.

I think a lot of what influences a writer is what you hear in the street, the language you hear, the way people talk, the way, the rhythms, the song, the language of your childhood. (1980)