# Quote — Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man

> 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.

- Author: [Grace Paley](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley.md)
- Book: [The Little Disturbances of Man](https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grace_Paley#The_Little_Disturbances_of_Man_(1959)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/grace-paley/the-little-disturbances-of-man/i-was-happy

## More from this book

> 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)