Quote

There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.

Anna Quindlen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anna Quindlen
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: July 8
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Anna Marie Quindlen
Forever
Walt
Literature
Pound
Littles
Pounds
Little
Thinks
Thing
Weight
Sampler
Thinking
Poetry
Ezra
World
Joy
Whitman
Beauty
Premium

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

Image
The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them. No one does the right thing out of fear. If you ever utter the words, 'We've always done it that way,' I urge you to wash out your mouth with soap.
Anna Quindlen
Image
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.
Anna Quindlen
Image
There is something so settled and stodgy about turning a great romance into next of kin on an emergency room form, and something so soothing and special, too.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Your hair isn't quite right and maybe you're a size bigger than you should be and on and on and on. I think there comes a moment when you've matured to the point where you suddenly think, nonsense. I am fine just the way I am.
Anna Quindlen
Image
People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.
Anna Quindlen
Image
being a parent is not transaction ... we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: we are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I remember adolescence, the years of having the impulse control of a mousetrap, of being as private as a safe-deposit box.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I'm very optimistic. I think if you would describe me, my pretty consistent affect is that I'm a pretty happy person.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I go online all the time, I just don't read about myself. I read a fashion website called Go Fug Yourself. I actually correspond with the Fug Girls and that's great.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games. In my religion, martyrs die.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I am an affirmative action hire.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I'm writing this memoir from the perspective of somebody who's prosperous and has means. Having said that, one of the things that I think I discovered about those additional years is that I don't think they really are added to the end of life.
Anna Quindlen
Image
All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Maybe someday it will seem quaint that, during a time of plague, some of the parents of the 1990s wanted to deny their children protection so that they could safeguard their own self- image. Or maybe we'll just seem like a bunch of lunatics.
Anna Quindlen
Image
There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays.
Anna Quindlen
Image
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.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Athletes are American princes and the locker room is their castle. Some of them behave in princely fashion, become legitimate heroes to us all. And some are jerks.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I got a fortune cookie that said, To remember is to understand. I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I think I'm like most novelists in that my books have gotten farther and farther away from autobiography the longer I've been writing them.
Anna Quindlen