Anna Quindlen quotes - page 3

And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that. (Anna Quindlen)
All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough. View quote
Anna Quindlen
There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too. View quote
Anna Quindlen
You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul. Anna Quindlen. View quote
Anna Quindlen
Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning. View quote
Anna Quindlen
We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind. View quote
Anna Quindlen
In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. View quote
Anna Quindlen
The truth about your own life is not always easy to accept, and sometimes hasn't even occurred to you. View quote
Anna Quindlen
Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off by myself with a book than do any of the dozens of things that children usually do to amuse themselves. I never aged out of it. View quote
Anna Quindlen
The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops. View quote
Anna Quindlen
A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement. (Anna Quindlen)
When children are small, parents should run their lives and not the other way around. View quote
Anna Quindlen
You want to have fun with your kids, and no one has fun with someone who runs roughshod. View quote
Anna Quindlen
the joy of someone who had been a reader all her life, whose world had been immeasurably enlarged by the words of others. View quote
Anna Quindlen
When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. View quote
Anna Quindlen
Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance. View quote
Anna Quindlen
There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews. View quote
Anna Quindlen
All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading. View quote
Anna Quindlen
It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. View quote
Anna Quindlen
I know the difference now between dedication and infatuation. That doesn't mean I don't still get an enormous kick out of infatuation the exciting ephemera, the punch in the stomach, the adrenaline to the heart. View quote
Anna Quindlen
I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society. (Anna Quindlen)
Well, we tell our kids things like 'don't gossip' and then an hour later they hear us on the phone. Stuff like that. View quote
Anna Quindlen
It makes me angry to think that . . . female sanitation workers will spend their days doing a job most of their co-workers think they can't handle, and then they will go home and do another job most of their co-workers don't want. View quote
Anna Quindlen
For most of my life the only ceremonies I've been to at which women were the stars were weddings. So I like weddings. View quote
Anna Quindlen
I am an affirmative action hire. View quote
Anna Quindlen