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Real friends offer both hard truths and soft landings and realize that it's sometimes more important to be nice than to be honest.

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
Important
Realize
Realizing
Landings
Honest
Landing
Nice
Soft
Friends
Truths
Hard
Offer
Sometimes
Offers
Real
Friendship

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

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Ethnic stereotypes are misshapen pearls, sometimes with a sandy grain of truth at their center. ... but they ignore complexity, change, and individuality.
Anna Quindlen
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I can't think of a single downside to motherhood now.
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So carry your courage in an easily accessible place, the way you do your cellphone or your wallet. You may still falter or fail, but you always know that you pushed hard and aimed high. Take a leap of faith. Fear not. Courage is the ultimate career move.
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Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.
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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.
Anna Quindlen
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In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself.
Anna Quindlen
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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 and tortuous.
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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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Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. We human beings are best understood one at a time.
Anna Quindlen
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Frankly, I'm mainly telling the story to myself. Thinking about audience is too daunting, and worst case, invites you to homogenize, to soften the hard edges of things.
Anna Quindlen
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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.
Anna Quindlen
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I think there was a long period of time when we got real invested in a youth culture, and not coincidentally it was when the baby boomers, who let's face it, take up a lot of space on the planet, were young.
Anna Quindlen
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You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.
Anna Quindlen
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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.
Anna Quindlen
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New York City has finally hired women to pick up the garbage, which makes sense to me, since, as I've discovered, a good bit of being a woman consists of picking up garbage.
Anna Quindlen
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Now, a lot of people are challenged by the fact that a record number of people in their sixties have living parents, and a record number of people in their sixties have kids who may still depend upon them.
Anna Quindlen
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I'm just remembering myself at 22 or 23. I was all engine and no steering. (Laughter) I had the wheels but I had no steering. I do think it's true that when you're younger, you're more likely to listen to all the naysayers, and people are always telling you how you ought to behave and what kind of job you should get and how you should look.
Anna Quindlen
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Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us.
Anna Quindlen
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The truth about your own life is not always easy to accept, and sometimes hasn't even occurred to you.
Anna Quindlen
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Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games. In my religion, martyrs die.
Anna Quindlen