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Don't ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: If you win the rat race, you're still a rat.

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
Father
Sent
Stills
Winning
Still
Year
Ever
Race
Years
Forget
Lasts
Postcard
Last
Postcards
Words
Rats

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

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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.
Anna Quindlen
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I was very driven, very focused, very ambitious. I mean, when I look back on myself in my 20s, part of me just cringes.
Anna Quindlen
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I think the very best thing about the internet is that I can read all the London papers every day if I want to.
Anna Quindlen
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When I'm falling, my girlfriends are my soft landing.
Anna Quindlen
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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.
Anna Quindlen
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I'm a Catholic of the New Testament, I'm not a Catholic of the hierarchy.
Anna Quindlen
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I think anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy.
Anna Quindlen
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What had I expected of the first child? Everything. Rocket scientist. Neurosurgeon. Designated hitter. We talked wisely at cocktail parties about the sad mistake our mothers had made in pinning all their hopes and dreams on us. We were full of it.
Anna Quindlen
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Decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
Anna Quindlen
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You can get rid of the column. It's a little like staying at a hotel you get used to the shape of the room, and then you're gone. With a novel you move into town and stay for a long time. That's both comforting and terrifying.
Anna Quindlen
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I hadn't written a love story before and I hadn't written a novel with a happy ending before.
Anna Quindlen
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People always blame the girl she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it.
Anna Quindlen
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what we call things matters. ... The words we use, and how we perceive those words, reflect how we value, or devalue, people, places, and things.
Anna Quindlen
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Life is not so much about beginnings and endings as it is about going on and on and on. It is about muddling through the middle.
Anna Quindlen
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In the same way the Brits had to get used to the idea that the sun had set on the British Empire, I think that there's the subrosa feeling that we are at the end of the American century, and I think that's very, very hard for Americans to take.
Anna Quindlen
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A finished person is a boring person.
Anna Quindlen
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I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.
Anna Quindlen
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All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.
Anna Quindlen
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Testosterone does not have to be toxic.
Anna Quindlen
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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