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We don't do ambivalence well in America. We do courage of our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American.

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
Wells
Convictions
Might
French
Well
Certainty
Right
Conviction
Courage
American
Makes
America
Ambivalence

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

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This is why I had children: to offer them a perfect dream of childhood that can fill their souls as they grow older.
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If there is anyone who's living the work of the New Testament, it's the nuns of the Catholic church and not the Catholic hierarchy.
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Prosecutors insist they are mounting a thorough investigation, which sometimes means thorough and sometimes, historically, has meant long enough to let the fire burn down in an incendiary case. A thorough investigation is fine an interminable one is disgraceful.
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That's really what I want in a leader I want somebody who's really, really smart.
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But it's important, while we are supporting lessons in respecting others, to remember that many of our youngest kids need to learn to respect themselves. You learn your worth from the way you are treated.
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The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.
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One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.
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Obama doesn't seem like a burger and a beer kind of guy. I have to say, I don't find that problematic at all.
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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.
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In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.
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Testosterone does not have to be toxic.
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So much of what you take for granted is the bedrock of happiness.
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the joy of someone who had been a reader all her life, whose world had been immeasurably enlarged by the words of others.
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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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If an opportunity scares you, that's God's way of saying you should jump at it.
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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.
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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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In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat.
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It would take a helluva man to replace no man at all.
Anna Quindlen
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Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And then one day your best friend from college, the one your kids adore, comes out to you.
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