Anna Quindlen Quotes

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life.

And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.

Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That's what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first.

.. at a certain age we learned to see right through it, and that age is now.

One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.

But no one ever leaves the town where they grew up, not really, even if they go.

the older we get, the more we understand that the women who know and love us - and love us despite what they know about us - are the joists that hold up the house of our existence.

there is still a kind of unique loneliness to child rearing for women. We so often do it in isolation. Add to the fact that in our competitive, perfectionist culture, in which the price woman are required to pay for freedom still seems to be martyrdom, almost everyone lies about motherhood. Part of that lying is loyalty - I can't let on that my kid is the only one on the playground who can't read or play the piano - and part of it is self-protection, since we've made hyper-motherhood a measure of female success. The preferred answer to the question "How are you?" is always "Fine," and the answer to the question "How are the kids?" is supposed to be "Great!" That's true even if the accurate answers would be "terrible" and "a mess." I think it produces its own kind of desperation, especially for women, who yearn to be emotionally open.

It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.

There was a period when I believed stuff meant something. I thought that if you had matching side chairs and a sofa that harmonized and some beautiful lamps to light them you would have a home, that elegance signaled happiness.

It’s great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

I am not alone. I am surrounded by words that tell me who I am, why I feel what I feel.

reading has as many functions as the human body, and... not all of them are cerebral.

My doctor says that, contrary to conventional wisdom, she doesn't believe our memories flag because of a drop in estrogen but because of how crowded it in the drawers of our minds.

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind, the second is to be kind, and the third is to be kind.

Set aside the old traditional notion of female as nurturer and male as leader; set aside, too, the new traditional notion of female as superwoman and male as oppressor. Begin with that most frightening of all things, a clean slate. And then look, every day, at the choices you are making, and when you ask yourself why you are making them, find this answer: Because they are what I want, or wish for. Because they reflect who and what I am.

This is the hard work of life in the world, to acknowledge within yourself the introvert, the clown, the artist, the homebody, the goofball, the thinker. Look inside. That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart.