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

Well, a wish, some wish, Ruth said. Well, I wished that this world wouldn’t end. This world, this world, Ruth said softly.

All of art is political; if a writer says this is not political, it's probably the most political thing that he could be doing. That's a statement of an alienation problem. I would say that my interest in ordinary life and how people live is a very political one. That's politics; that's what it is. (1982)

I'd been writing poetry until about 1956, and then I just sort of made up my mind that I had to write stories. I love the whole tradition of poetry, but I couldn't figure out a way to use my own Bronx English tongue in poems. I can now, better, but those early poems were all very literary; they picked up after whatever poet I was reading. They used what I think of as only one ear: you have two ears, one is for the sound of literature and the other is for your neighborhood, for your mother and father's house. (1982)