Anna Quindlen Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Not writing at all leads to nothing.

  Anna Quindlen

  Writing

  6 Copy quote

• Get a life. A real life. Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.

  Anna Quindlen

  Real, House, Next

  Anna Quindlen (2002). “A Short Guide to a Happy Life”, Arrow/Children's (a Division of Random House Group)

  7 Copy quote

• Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers' incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong, who will protect us? If they are not imperfect, how can we equal them?

  Anna Quindlen

  Mother, Strong, Children

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.101, Ballantine Books

  22 Copy quote

• While we pay lip service to the virtues of reading, the truth is that there is still in our culture something that suspects those who read too much, whatever reading too much means, of being lazy, aimless dreamers, people who need to grow up and come outside to where real life is, who think themselves superior in their separateness.

  Anna Quindlen

  Growing Up, Real, Reading

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “How Reading Changed My Life”, p.9, Ballantine Books

  6 Copy quote

• When you really want to say no, say no. You can't do everything - or at least not well.

  Anna Quindlen

  Want, Habit, Wells

  9 Copy quote

• There may perhaps be a new generation of doctors horrified by lacerations, infections, women who have douched with kitchen cleanser. What an irony it would be if fanatics continued to kill and yet it was the apathy and silence of the medical profession that most wounded the ability to provide what is, after all, a medical procedure.

  Anna Quindlen

  Doctors, Rights, Medicine

  4 Copy quote

• In life, the classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end.

  Anna Quindlen

  Classroom, Exam, Ends

  Anna Quindlen (2002). “A Short Guide to a Happy Life”, Arrow/Children's (a Division of Random House Group)

  4 Copy quote

• You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.

  Anna Quindlen

  Inspirational, Design, Firsts

  Anna Quindlen (2002). “A Short Guide to a Happy Life”, Arrow/Children's (a Division of Random House Group)

  11 Copy quote

• If you want something, it will elude you. If you do not want something, you will get ten of it in the mail.

  Anna Quindlen

  Elude You, Elude Us, Want Something

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.260, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

• Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.

  Anna Quindlen

  Happiness, Baby, Passion

  Anna Quindlen (2002). “A Short Guide to a Happy Life”, Arrow/Children's (a Division of Random House Group)

  4 Copy quote

• People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. Of all the words that have stuck to the ribs of my soul, poetry has been the most filling.

  Anna Quindlen

  Running, Heart, Wine

  Anna Quindlen (2004). “Loud and Clear”, Random House Large Print Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. "Book love," Trollope called it. "It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live." Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort...reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung.

  Anna Quindlen

  Book, Reading, Home

  7 Copy quote

• part of the problem with a war on poverty today is that many Americans have decided that being poor is a character defect, not an economic condition.

  Anna Quindlen

  War, Character, Today

  12 Copy quote

• The women of my mother's generation had, in the main, only one decision to make about their lives: who they would marry. From that, so much else followed: where they would live, in what sort of conditions, whether they would be happy or sad or, so often, a bit of both. There were roles and there were rules.

  Anna Quindlen

  Mother, Women, Decision

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.17, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

• It often seems, looking back, that the unexpected comes to define us, the paths we didn't see coming and may have wandered down by mistake. The older we get the more willing we are to follow those, to surprise ourselves.

  Anna Quindlen

  Mistake, May, Path

  Anna Quindlen (2012). “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake: A Memoir of a Woman's Life”, p.87, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Anna Quindlen

  Everyday, Normal, Knows

  "One True Thing". Book by Anna Quindlen, www.cnn.com. 1994.

  9 Copy quote

• Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don't believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity.

  Anna Quindlen

  Summer, Distance, Lying

  Anna Quindlen (2004). “Loud and Clear”, p.25, Random House

  12 Copy quote

• When children are small, parents should run their lives and not the other way around.

  Anna Quindlen

  Running, Children, Parent

  4 Copy quote

• Whether talking about addiction, taxation [on cigarettes] or education [about smoking], there is always at the center of the conversation an essential conundrum: How come we're selling this deadly stuff anyway?

  Anna Quindlen

  Talking, Addiction, Smoking

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Anna Quindlen

  Children, Sitting, Keeping Quiet

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Every Last One: A Novel”, p.29, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.

  Anna Quindlen

  Trust, Stupid, Book

  10 Copy quote

• When I write a novel, I have what I think of as an icon that helps get me into the world of the book.

  Anna Quindlen

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

  4 Copy quote

• It's what the Taliban does in Afghanistan, it's what gets done in the Middle East, and it's clearly something that certain mainly conservative groups in the United States would like to do. They miss the good old days, when men were men and women were nothing.

  Anna Quindlen

  Men, Missing, Middle East

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• On social welfare the Church does so much good around the world - nuns running schools and homeless shelters, priests ministering to people who are in crisis.

  Anna Quindlen

  Running, School, People

  4 Copy quote

• I love having a president who I think is smarter than I am.

  Anna Quindlen

  Thinking, President, Smarter

  4 Copy quote

Page 4 of 16

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin