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being a parent is not transaction ... we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: we are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us.

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
Strong
Loving
Give
Forward
Enough
Ultimate
Giving
Pay
Good
Parents
Stay
Transaction
Leave
Transactions
Parent
Endeavor

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

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For most of my life the only ceremonies I've been to at which women were the stars were weddings. So I like weddings.
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The truth is that when you're writing a novel you're really living in it you're living in the house, and you're living in the town.
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The one thing that I always got positive reinforcement for from teachers, who really changed my life, was the written word.
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It is so easy to exist instead of live.
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Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.
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Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.
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Let me say first that reading is my favorite pastime, bar none. If I couldn't read, I don't know what I'd do. But as a writer, it's both a blessing and a curse. You absorb technique as you go along.
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The pursuit of otherness, the sense that we are somehow different than our brothers and sisters, no matter where we find them, allows for all the other great evils: racism, sexism, homophobia, violence against gay people and against women.
Anna Quindlen
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This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet.
Anna Quindlen
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It is hard to find someone who will give your children a feeling of security while it lasts and not wound them too much when it isfinished, who will treat those children as if they were her own, but knows--and never forgets--that they are yours.
Anna Quindlen
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After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'
Anna Quindlen
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Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.
Anna Quindlen
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Writing for UrbanMoms has awarded me a multitude of amazing opportunities. I have traveled to new places alone and with my family. I have discovered new products, new books, new trends and new restaurants, and been able to share them with my readers. I've met other wonderful writers and many incredible celebrities.
Anna Quindlen
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I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make my marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
Anna Quindlen
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When you really want to say no, say no. You can't do everything - or at least not well.
Anna Quindlen
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My home was in a pleasant place outside of Philadelphia. But I really lived, truly lived, somewhere else. I lived within the covers of books.
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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I don't have to listen to the Gospel on Sunday to know the stories of the New Testament. They inform so much of what I write that they're practically like a news scrim that goes through my brain 24/7.
Anna Quindlen
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Reading has always been life unwrapped to me, a way of understanding the world and understanding myself through both the unknown and the everyday. If being a parent consists often of passing along chunks of ourselves to unwitting-often unwilling-recipients, then books are, for me, one of the simplest and most sure-fire ways of doing that.
Anna Quindlen
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I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that this is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.
Anna Quindlen