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… - Grace Paley

I still remember my mother reading the newspaper at the table when I was a kid. Apparently the Nazi party has just gotten itself together, and Hitler is in power. It must be around 1939, maybe a little earlier. My mother says to my father, “Look, Zenia, it’s beginning again.” Those words— “it’s beginning again”—have reverberated in my ears all my life. It’s beginning again. The fear you hear in those words. As a person who has never really suffered any prejudice, I remember those words.

one of the things that art is about, for me, is justice. Now, that isn't a matter of opinion, really. That isn't to say, "I'm going to show these people right or wrong" or whatever. But what art is about-and this is what justice is about, although you'll have your own interpretations-is the illumination of what isn't known, the lighting up of what is under a rock, of what has been hidden. And I think people feel like that who are beginning to write.

a lot more women are writing. A lot of people who wouldn’t have written are writing. When a couple of black women speak, the throats of many are opened. Somehow or other they give courage and sound to their sisters.