# Grace Paley - Quotes: 15 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley ## Books - [The Little Disturbances of Man](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man.md) — 15 quotes ## Recently added quotes > The organization of his ideas was all wrong; I was drawn to the memory of myself -- a mere stripling of a girl -- the day I learned that the shortest distance between any two points was a great circle. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/the-organization-of-his.md) > He settles in the kitchen because the children are asleep all over the rest of the house. I unknot his tie and offer him a cold sandwich. He raps my backside, paying attention to the bounce. I walk around him as though he were a Maypole, kissing as I go. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/he-settles-in-the.md) > It is still hard to believe that a man who sends out the Ten Commandments every year for a Christmas card can be so easy buttoning and unbuttoning. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/it-is-still.md) > I thought of praying for divine guidance in line with the great spiritual renaissance of our time. But I am all thumbs in that kind of deciduous conversation. I asked myself, did I, as God's creature under the stars, have the right to evade an event, a factual occurrence, to parry an experience or even a small peradventure. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/i-thought-of-praying.md) > I sighed in and I groaned out, so as to melt a certain pain around my heart. A steel ring like arthritis, at my age. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/i-sighed-in-and.md) > I was happy, but I am now in possession of knowledge that this is wrong. Happiness isn't so bad for a woman. She gets fatter, she gets older, she could lie down, nuzzling a regiment of men and little kids, she could just die of the pleasure. But men are different, they have to own money, or they have to be famous, or everybody on the block has too look up to them from the cellar stairs. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/i-was-happy.md) > With a few grasping, kind words and a modern gimmick, she hoped to breathe eternity into a mortal matter, love. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/with-a-few.md) > In no time at all his cheerful face appeared at the door of the spring dusk. In the street among peaceable strangers he did a handstand. Then easy and impervious, in full control, he cartwheeled eastward into the source of night. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/in-no-time.md) > Like a good and happy man increasing his virtue, he kissed her. She did not move away from him. She remained in the embrace of his right arm, her face nuzzling his shoulder, her eyes closed. He tipped her chin to look and measure opportunity. She could not open her eyes. Honorably he searched, but on her face he met no quarrel. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/like-a-good.md) > My last girl was Jewish, which is often a warm kind of girl, concerned about food intake and employability. They don't like you to work too hard, I understand, until you're hooked and then, you bastard, sweat! [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/my-last-girl.md) > I brought up lonesomeness again, and not being understood at all except by some women everybody hated. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/i-brought-up-lonesomeness.md) > We made for him a great dinner of honor. At this dinner I said to him, for the last time, I thought, "Goodbye, dear friend, topic of my life, now we part." And to myself I said further: Finished. This is your lonesome bed. A lady what they call fat and fifty. You made it personally. From this lonesome bed you will finally fall to a bed not so lonesome, only crowded with a million bones. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/we-made-for.md)