I sighed in and I groaned out, so as to melt a certain pain around my heart. A steel ring like arthritis, at my age. - Grace Paley

that, I think, is really where lots of literature comes from. It really comes, not from knowing so much, but from not knowing. It comes from what you're curious about. It comes from what obsesses you. It comes from what you want to know.

I can't see me writing an autobiography. I mean it seems so stupid. [Laughter.] You have to feel like you are telling the world something. I feel I'm doing it when I write the way I write. (1995)

Tillie Olsen and I didn’t know it, but we were part of a movement.