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The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

Anna Quindlen

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Anna Quindlen
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: July 8
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Anna Marie Quindlen
Beginning
Thyself
Becoming
Empowering
Perfect
Holiday
Hard
Encouragement
Giving
Perfection
Thing
Amazing
Work
Confidence
Really
Female
Perfectionism

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You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.
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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.
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All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women.
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When you look at the women that have made a real difference in the world throughout history, what they’ve done has almost always been defined by fearlessness. That’s something I came to at a certain point I wish I’d come to it younger. Stop looking over your shoulder — there’s nobody who matters back there.
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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.
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If we really feel like we're comfortable in our own skins now, we have a longer period of time to live out that kind of third or fourth act of our life.
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My father really, really pushed me to excel in a way that I resented for years and then realized had really worked for me.
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I think we now know the limits also of intelligence and rhetoric.
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A safety net of small white lies can be the bedrock of a successful marriage. You wouldn't believe how cheaply I can do a kitchen renovation.
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Decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
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Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us.
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Parents have railed against shelters near schools, but no one has made any connection between the crazed consumerism of our kids and their elders' cold unconcern toward others. Maybe the homeless are not the only ones who need to spend time in these places to thaw out.
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When children are small, parents should run their lives and not the other way around.
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People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.
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I always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I couldn't figure out how you could be a novelist and make any money, which continues to be a problem for novelists the world over.
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You realize that especially when you're writing a book like this, looking back on your life, that there's just such a depth of understanding you acquire over time with the help of the people who love you that that's when you can really get down to what you really think and believe.
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Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.
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We don't do ambivalence well in America. We do courage of our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American.
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All parents should be aware that when they mock or curse gay people, they may be mocking or cursing their own child.
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Raising a child is a little like Picasso's work in the beginning he did very conventional representational things. Cubism came after he had the rules down pat.
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