Quote

People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.

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
People
Eloquently
Block
Despair
Writer
Write
Writing

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

Image
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
Image
Barack Obama is the kind of guy who likes to do things by inches, he's the kind of guy who likes to build consensus and compromise.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I had that feeling you have when you're watching a sad movie, sobbing at the heartbreak you are feeling at the same time that you know the heartbreak isn't exactly real, that it will be gone by the time you get home and make a cup of tea. I found a lot of life like that when I was younger, as though I was practicing for what came later.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement.
Anna Quindlen
Image
... It was the idea of facing a future skimming the surface of life, winging my way in and out of other people's crises, confusions, and passages, engaging them enough to get the story, but never enough to be indelibly touched by what I had seen or heard.
Anna Quindlen
Image
The New Testament has had a really powerful effect on how I write and how I live my life.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Testosterone does not have to be toxic.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Acts of bravery don't always take place on battlefields. They can take place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations, and yes, your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I think the last couple of years of life for many, many people are the same as they were 50, 60, 70 years ago. They could be really tough because of infirmity.
Anna Quindlen
Image
The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible that is, that one is male and the other female.
Anna Quindlen
Image
In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.
Anna Quindlen
Image
You just can't tell or calibrate motive or intelligence or sense. So I don't read anything unless someone tells me that it's really smart or illuminating. I don't read any reviews anymore and it's been really liberating.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement. It would be wonderful if they came to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead now, that won’t happen. We have to teach ourselves how to make room for them, to love them, and to live, really live.
Anna Quindlen
Image
It often seems, looking back, that the unexpected comes to define us, the paths we didn't see coming and may have wandered down by mistake. The older we get the more willing we are to follow those, to surprise ourselves.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Amid attempts to protect elephants from ivory poachers and dolphins from tuna nets, the rights of children go remarkably unremarked.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I'm boggled by the idea of being an only child. I know nothing at all (I'm happy to say) about having had a cold and withholding mother, about being divorced. The more I've been writing novels, each novel I've written has become successively less grounded in anything approaching autobiography.
Anna Quindlen
Image
All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I don't know what I would do in the world without [female friends] for advice, for comfort, for simply knowing that there is someone out there who knows me as I am, and loves me despite and because of it.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Young men kill someone for a handful of coins, then are remorseless, even casual: Hey, man, things happen. And their parents nab the culprit: it was the city, the cops, the system, the crowd, the music. Anyone but him. Anyone but me.
Anna Quindlen