A Quote by Grace Paley

My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.

Grace Paley

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Absolutely Active Adequate Journals Keeping Life Moral Moral Life Notes Useless Vocabulary Writing Writing Notes

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Grace Paley
American - Writer
December 11, 1922 - August 22, 2007

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

Grace Paley

Some may say [journal keeping] is a great deal of trouble. But we should not call anything trouble which brings to pass good. I consider that portion of my life which has been spent in keeping journals and writing history to have been very profitably spent. - "If there was no other motive in view [except] to have the privilege of reading over our journals and for our children to read, it would pay for the time spent in writing it.

Wilford Woodruff

I don't end up writing songs in my journals, but I'm sure that my ability to write songs has been helped by how consistently and impulsively I try to get my life into words through the journals.

Lucy Dacus

When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things.

John Irving

Music is a gestalt. Songs are a life force and they have specific vocabulary to them. You hear a few notes, and they take you into a world of association.

Alan Menken

To carry adequate life insurance is a moral obligation incumbent upon the great majority of citizens.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

If I'm writing about my life, I'm already thinking of anyone in my life who might be reading it, and I'm keeping that as a kind of censorship voice in my head. And then, commenters - I'm keeping that in my head, too.

Mandy Stadtmiller

I've been keeping journals since I was a kid.

Mariette Hartley

I've been keeping journals since I was 13.

Keke Palmer

Oscar Wilde quite rightly said, 'All art is useless'. And that may sound as if that means it's something not worth supporting. But if you actually think about it, the things that matter in life are useless. Love is useless. Wine is useless. Art is the love and wine of life. It is the extra, without which life is not worth living.

Stephen Fry

With non-fiction writing I feel like I'm confined and driven by what actually happened. That makes the "plot". So it's a process of getting all of my notes typed up, then scanning through the notes, trying to extract or find certain vignettes that seem like they might write well - that might have a potential for good energy, shape, etc. And then at some point I start stringing these together, keeping an eye on the word count.

George Saunders

I knew at that young age that going to the Bureau of Indian Affairs was useless, absolutely useless. I grew up having no faith in the bureaucracy of government.

Russell Means

'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.

Joyce Carol Oates

Vintage is my vocabulary... like the notes of a musician.

Alessandro Michele

It took me to about maybe 16, 17 or 18 or something to realise I was absolutely useless at everything else except for playing guitar and writing words

Noel Gallagher

I've been keeping tour journals since I was 17 years old.

Laura Jane Grace

A Quote by Grace Paley

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