Quote

I once wanted to be a personage. Now I am comfortable being a person.

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
Personage
Comfortable
Literature
Persons
Person
Wanted

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

Image
I think I'm like most novelists in that my books have gotten farther and farther away from autobiography the longer I've been writing them.
Anna Quindlen
Image
As I said, I had this fabulous college education. At college I met the man to whom I've been married for 34 years and who is the father of those three kids. I seriously considered going to another college, and my life would have been completely different in every way.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I know that it's very dispiriting for people in their twenties, who expected to graduate from college, get their own apartments, get a job, and move forward with their lives, and in fact are still now living with Mom and Dad, which is challenging for all involved.
Anna Quindlen
Image
America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.
Anna Quindlen
Image
It's what the Taliban does in Afghanistan, it's what gets done in the Middle East, and it's clearly something that certain mainly conservative groups in the United States would like to do. They miss the good old days, when men were men and women were nothing.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Loss as muse. Loss as character. Loss as life.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I do tend to be almost kind of Pollyanna-ish person.
Anna Quindlen
Image
The issue is privacy. Why is the decision by a woman to sleep with a man she has just met in a bar a private one, and the decision to sleep with the same man for $100 subject to criminal penalties?
Anna Quindlen
Image
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
Image
[In the aftermath of death] Small talk feels too small, big talk too enormous.
Anna Quindlen
Image
For many years, despite what I thought were really punitive decisions about women in the church, I stayed and stayed and stayed. I kept saying to myself, The Catholic church is my church, and by God, I'm going to stay here, despite what the hierarchy does.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Not writing at all leads to nothing.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I think when people keep saying to you, You're good at this, you just keep doing it.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I can't think of a single downside to motherhood now.
Anna Quindlen
Image
The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them. No one does the right thing out of fear. If you ever utter the words, 'We've always done it that way,' I urge you to wash out your mouth with soap.
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
There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.
Anna Quindlen
Image
All things being equal, I would choose a woman over a man in order to even the balance of power, to insinuate a different perspective into the process, to give young women something to shoot for and someone to look up to. But all things are rarely equal.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. We human beings are best understood one at a time.
Anna Quindlen
Image
A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement.
Anna Quindlen