The best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don't live with a lover or roommate who doesn't respect your work. Don't lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don't write.
Grace PaleyRead
I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified. He said, What? What life? No life of mine.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on a past relationship and the emotional complexities involved.
In this quote, Grace Paley encapsulates the bittersweet feelings that arise when encountering an ex-partner after many years of shared life. The speaker acknowledges their past connection and how deeply intertwined their lives once were, contrasting it with the ex-husband's dismissive response that highlights the emotional distance and fragmentation that can occur after a significant relationship ends.
Themes
RelationshipLoveEx-HusbandMemoryLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about moving on after a previous relationship.
More from Grace Paley
All quotes →…I go through a story for lies. I might discover the lie of trying to show off. Sometimes they’re lies of character. Sometimes they are lies of writing the most beautiful sentence in the world that has nothing to do with the story.
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You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
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I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first.
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This hill crossed with broken pines and maples lumpy with the burial mounds of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane of '38) out of their rotting hearts generations rise trying once more to become the forest just beyond them tall enough to be called trees in their youth like aspen a bouquet of young beech is gathered they still wear last summer's leaves the lightest brown almost translucent how their stubbornness has decorated the winter woods.
Grace PaleyRead
Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.
Grace PaleyRead
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