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Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.

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
Everything
College
Skipped
Sometimes
Minutes
Happenstance
Different
Changed
Whim
Life
Went
Settled
Almost
Remind
Party
Specific
Everyone
Minute
Lives
Built

More quotes by 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.
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Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people just like me.
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I'm a Catholic of the New Testament, I'm not a Catholic of the hierarchy.
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She say guilt is a useless emotion. Oh, please, says Nancy. Guilt is what separates humans from animals.
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I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that this is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.
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I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.
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It is difficult for me to imagine the same dedication to women's rights on the part of the kind of man who lives in partnership with someone he likes and respects, and the kind of man who considers breast-augmentation surgery self-improvement.
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Sure smokers have made personal choices. And they pay for those choices every day, whether sitting through an airline flight dyingfor a smoke, or dying for a smoke in the oncology wing of a hospital. The tobacco companies have not paid nearly enough for the killing.
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Keeping kids safe is sometimes a delusion. The world is a perilous place. Sometimes the kitchen is a perilous place.
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A finished person is a boring person.
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You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.
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London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.
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People ask me all the time if I'm from a family of writers. The literal short answer is no, but my father and his brothers and sisters and his mother are all people who would sit around with a Tom Collins and tell stories that seemed to get better and better each time they told them.
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Speech is the voice of the heart.
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The problem... is emblematic of what hasn't changed during the equal opportunity revolution of the last 20 years. Doors opened opportunities evolved. Law, institutions, corporations moved forward. But many minds did not.
Anna Quindlen
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Fifty years ago, teachers said their top discipline problems were talking, chewing gum, making noise, and running in the halls. The current list, by contrast, sounds like a cross between a rap sheet and the seven deadly sins.
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I only really understand myself, what I'm really thinking and feelings, when I've talked it over with my circle of female friends. When days go by without that connection, I feel like a radio playing in an empty room.
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The closest thing to an outline is, because my memory is so bad now, if something occurs to me that I think might be important or pivotal, a lot of times I'll scribble notes down somewhere until I can get back to the book. Of course half the time I look at those notes the next morning and think, What was that about?
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When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.
Anna Quindlen
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high fashion has little to do with what women wear and a lot to do with what retailers mark down later.
Anna Quindlen