We keep being mean-we're still mean to Vietnam. Mean to Cuba. Mean to Haiti. That kind of meanness is more discouraging to me than almost anything. Y… - Grace Paley

I hate the American expectation of violence. I’m not going to play into any of that. When I must write about violence, I will, but I’ll do it straight, not add and add because the level is higher every year.

I’ve been surrounded by music for most of my life. Always classical. But I think the most powerful sounds are those voices, those childhood voices. The tune of those voices. Other languages, Russian and Yiddish, coming up smack against the English. I think you hear that a lot in American literature.

Literature has something to do with language. There's probably a natural grammar at the tip of your tongue. You may not believe it, but if you say what's on your mind in the language that comes to you from your parents and your street and friends, you'll probably say something beautiful. Still, if you weren't a tough, recalcitrant kid, that language may have been destroyed by the tongues of school-teachers who were ashamed of interesting homes, inflection, and language and left them all for correct usage.