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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

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Anna Quindlen
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: July 8
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Anna Marie Quindlen
Didn
Follow
Seems
Coming
May
Willing
Wandered
Back
Mistake
Paths
Path
Define
Looking
Unexpected
Often
Surprise
Comes
Older

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part of the problem with a war on poverty today is that many Americans have decided that being poor is a character defect, not an economic condition.
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There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.
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The reason child care is such a loaded issue is that when we talk about it, we are always tacitly talking about motherhood. And when we're talking about motherhood we're always tacitly assuming that child care must be a very dim second to full-time mother care.
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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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So much of what you take for granted is the bedrock of happiness.
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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.
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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 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.
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It's an odd kind of feeling because it sort of reminds me of being five again. When you're a five-year-old, you don't pay any attention to what anyone thinks of you. You just sort of are in your skin.
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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.
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I know a lot and have written a lot and have thought a lot about motherhood.
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The Church does an enormous amount of good, and it carries one of the most valuable messages imaginable - that you should love your neighbor as yourself, and that if you have two coats you should give one to the man who has none.
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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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Well, we tell our kids things like 'don't gossip' and then an hour later they hear us on the phone. Stuff like that.
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The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific andtorturous, involving and utterly tedious, all at the same time. The world is full of women made to feel strange because what everyone assumes comes naturally is so difficult to do--never mind to do well.
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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.
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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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It is so easy to waste our lives: Our days, our hours, our minutes ... it is so easy to exist instead of live.
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Now the baby boomers, i.e., us, are getting older, and were suddenly discovering that there are great things about getting older. You have time for your friendships and you appreciate them in ways that you didn't before.
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People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs.
Anna Quindlen