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Anna Quindlen

Anna Quindlen Quotes

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Anna Quindlen, born on July 8, 1952, is a renowned American author known for her insightful social commentary and delicate portrayal of everyday life. Her writing career began as a newspaper editor, later transitioning to novel writing, which has been well-received by readers.

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All Thinking Ifs People Children World Writing Way Men Years Book Knows Sometimes Kids Literature Mother Reading Kind Looks Parent Feels

Famous Anna Quindlen Quotes

“It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the pale new growth on an evergreen, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the colour of our kids’ eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. Unless you know there is a clock ticking.”

Source: A Short Guide to a Happy Life

“Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.”

Knows Years Children Wanted Young Mother Advice Grateful Polite Outspoken Suffragettes Young Mother

Author:Anna Quindlen

“Women writers of all people should know better than to pigeonhole women, put them in little groups, the smart one, the sweet one.”

People Knows Should Littles Groups Sweet Smart

Book:Object Lessons: One True Thing; Black and Blue

Source: Object Lessons: One True Thing; Black and Blue

“Raising children is a spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants sort of deal, as any parent knows, particularly after an adult child says that his most searing memory consists of an offhand comment in the car on the way to second grade that the parent cannot even dimly recall.”

Knows Way Children Moments Parent Memories Deals Car Adults Seats Grades Comment Pants Recalls Raising Children Spurs Spur Of The Moment Adult Children

Author:Anna Quindlen

“It is hard to find someone who will give your children a feeling of security while it lasts and not wound them too much when it isfinished, who will treat those children as if they were her own, but knows--and never forgets--that they are yours.”

Ifs Knows Giving Children Hard Feelings Lasts Forget Too Much Security Treats Our Children Wounds Your Children Never Forget

Book:Living Out Loud

Source: Living Out Loud

“Anyone who has breast-fed knows two things for sure: The baby wants to be fed at the most inopportune times, in the most inopportune places, and the baby will prevail.... And so the baby should, and the mom, too. Sometimes a breast is a sexual object, and sometimes it's a food delivery system, and one need not preclude nor color the other.”

Knows Want Needs Should Two Sometimes Objects Color Baby Mom Two Things Breasts Feds Delivery

Author: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.”

Knows Heart Mean Stills Differences Exciting Enormous Kicks Stomach Dedication Infatuation Adrenaline Ephemera

Book:Living Out Loud

Source: Living Out Loud

“I don't do research for my novels. Obviously, in my other line of work as a reporter and a columnist, I've had the opportunity to get to know both social workers and TV talk-show hosts.”

Knows Shows Opportunity Social Lines Novel Tvs Research Workers Host Reporters Social Worker Talk Shows Columnists

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I can't begin to predict how news will be delivered to readers in, say, 100 years. But I do know one thing that hasn't changed: Whatever the delivery system, whether it's a magazine, book or blog, people like vivid writing, strong stories and credible people. So while the venue is changing rapidly, human nature isn't, which I find soothing.”

People Knows Writing Years Humans I Can Book Stories Strong One Thing Human Nature Changed Reader News Magazines Vivid Blogs Delivery Soothing Credible Venues

Author:Anna Quindlen

“Let me say first that reading is my favorite pastime, bar none. If I couldn't read, I don't know what I'd do. But as a writer, it's both a blessing and a curse. You absorb technique as you go along.”

Ifs Knows Firsts Reading Blessing Let Me My Favorite Technique Bars Curse Pastime

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I'm boggled by the idea of being an only child. I know nothing at all (I'm happy to say) about having had a cold and withholding mother, about being divorced. The more I've been writing novels, each novel I've written has become successively less grounded in anything approaching autobiography.”

Knows Writing Children Ideas Mother Novel Written Cold Autobiography Grounded Divorced Only Child Withholding

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I always have music on unless I'm reading aloud, which I always do before I hand anything in. It's the only way to know if a sentence really works, without clunks or cul-de-sac clauses.”

Ifs Knows Way Hands Reading Sentences Clauses Reading Aloud

Author:Anna Quindlen

“The unemployment rate among the young in the United States is still very disconcerting, although we all know it's nowhere near as bad as it is in some of the European countries, where in some places it approaches 50 percent.”

Knows Stills Country States Young United United States Approach Percent Rate Unemployment European Countries Unemployment Rate

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I know that it's very dispiriting for people in their twenties, who expected to graduate from college, get their own apartments, get a job, and move forward with their lives, and in fact are still now living with Mom and Dad, which is challenging for all involved.”

People Knows Stills Facts Jobs Moving Challenges College Mom Dad Involved Twenties Expected Moving Forward Graduates Apartment Mom And Dad

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I know a lot and have written a lot and have thought a lot about motherhood.”

Knows Written Motherhood

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I think we now know the limits also of intelligence and rhetoric.”

Thinking Knows Limits Rhetoric

Author:Anna Quindlen

“The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.”

People Knows Kids School Culture Literature Brain Talking Listening Messages High School Built Court Reunion Attending Prom High School Reunion School Reunion

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I don't have to listen to the Gospel on Sunday to know the stories of the New Testament. They inform so much of what I write that they're practically like a news scrim that goes through my brain 24/7.”

Knows Writing Stories Brain News Sunday Testament New Testament

Author:Anna Quindlen

“And I don't have to listen to a sermon to know what to think or feel about them. It's almost as if I absorbed completely what mattered most to me, and the rest could go.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Feels Sermons

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I wondered why I hadn't loved that day more, why I hadn't savored every bit of it...why I hadn't known how good it was to live so normally, so everyday. But you only know that, I suppose, after it's not normal and every day any longer.”

Knows Bits Known Normal Everyday

Author:Anna Quindlen

“The beginning and the end are never really the journey of discovery for me. It is the middle that remains a puzzle until well into the writing. That's how life is most of the time, isn't it? You know where you are and where you hope to wind up. It's the getting there that's challenging.”

Knows Writing Wells Ends Life Is Challenges Journey Middle Wind Discovery Remains Where You Are Puzzles

Author:Anna Quindlen

“This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet.”

Knows Children Quiet Sitting My Children Seats Drivers Keeping Quiet

Book:Every Last One: A Novel

Source: Every Last One: A Novel

“I had that feeling you have when you're watching a sad movie, sobbing at the heartbreak you are feeling at the same time that you know the heartbreak isn't exactly real, that it will be gone by the time you get home and make a cup of tea. I found a lot of life like that when I was younger, as though I was practicing for what came later.”

Knows Real Feelings Home Found Gone Cups Tea Cups Of Tea Sobbing Sad Movie

Book:Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake: A Memoir of a Woman's Life

Source: Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake: A Memoir of a Woman's Life

“The 1992 US Olympic basketball team is the best sports team ever, the equivalent of rounding up the greatest American writers of the last century or so and watching them collaborate: 'OK, Twain, you do the dialogue and hand off to Faulkner. He'll do the interior monologue. Hemingway will edit - no, don't make that face, you know you overwrite. And be nice to Cheever. He's young, but he's got a good ear. Wharton and Cather can't play - they're girls.'”

“I don't know what I would do in the world without [female friends] for advice, for comfort, for simply knowing that there is someone out there who knows me as I am, and loves me despite and because of it.”

Knows World Knowing Advice Mom Comfort Female And Love Despite Know Me Being A Mom Female Friends

Author:Anna Quindlen

“So carry your courage in an easily accessible place, the way you do your cellphone or your wallet. You may still falter or fail, but you always know that you pushed hard and aimed high. Take a leap of faith. Fear not. Courage is the ultimate career move.”

Knows Way May Stills Hard Moving Careers Failing Ultimate Leap Fear Not Wallets Leap Of Faith Cellphone

Author:Anna Quindlen

About the Author

Born: July 8, 1952
Known for: Author
Quotes: 434

Related Topics

Thinking Ifs People Children World Writing Way Men Years Book Knows Sometimes Kids Literature Mother Reading Kind Looks Parent Feels

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Living Out LoudRelated source material

Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public and the PrivateRelated source material

A Short Guide to a Happy LifeRelated source material

Loud and ClearRelated source material

How Reading Changed My LifeRelated source material

Every Last One: A NovelRelated source material

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake: A Memoir of a Woman's LifeRelated source material

Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional CityRelated source material

Object Lessons: One True Thing ; Black and BlueRelated source material

Object Lessons: One True Thing; Black and BlueRelated source material

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