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 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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of authenticity in storytelling and the perils of embellishing the truth.
In this quote, Grace Paley reflects on the nature of storytelling, highlighting the various ways in which narrative can be distorted by the desire to impress or to create beauty. She warns against the lies that can emerge from an urge to show off or distract from the story's core truth, suggesting that a writer's character and the integrity of their message are paramount in crafting meaningful narratives.
Themes
StorytellingTruthAuthenticityCharacterWriting
In practice
Example use cases
In a literature class discussing the importance of authenticity in writing.
More from Grace Paley
All quotes →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.
Grace PaleyRead
You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
Grace PaleyRead
I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first.
Grace PaleyRead
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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