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

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

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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.
Anna Quindlen
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Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement.
Anna Quindlen
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Decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
Anna Quindlen
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A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world.
Anna Quindlen
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I had that feeling you have when you're watching a sad movie, sobbing at the heartbreak you are feeling at the same time that you know the heartbreak isn't exactly real, that it will be gone by the time you get home and make a cup of tea. I found a lot of life like that when I was younger, as though I was practicing for what came later.
Anna Quindlen
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Poor kids are much more likely to become sick than their richer counterparts, but much less likely to have health insurance. Talk about a double whammy.
Anna Quindlen
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In the same way the Brits had to get used to the idea that the sun had set on the British Empire, I think that there's the subrosa feeling that we are at the end of the American century, and I think that's very, very hard for Americans to take.
Anna Quindlen
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I really feel like if you can get past your fear, if you can say, Uh-uh, I'm afraid to do that and I'm going to do it anyhow, that that's really the way to have a satisfying life moving forward. I think I had that kind of fearlessness even as a young person. It wasn't tempered by experience or wisdom, but it took me a long way.
Anna Quindlen
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So much of what you take for granted is the bedrock of happiness.
Anna Quindlen
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Well, I'd like to think I am, and I'd also like to think that we're all having a lot more fun getting older than we pretend. It was interesting to me when I first started working on this book that I'd mentioned that I was writing a memoir about aging and everybody would moan and groan and carry on.
Anna Quindlen
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You teach your 16-year-old with your heart in your mouth to be a good driver and none of that makes any difference when some drunk comes around a corner and runs a stop sign.
Anna Quindlen
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I sort of feel like it comes around again. That when you get to a certain age, when you've lived enough and you've got your friends to support you and your family to support you, you wake up one morning and think, yeah, I'm okay.
Anna Quindlen
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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
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I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write, and there are very few of them.
Anna Quindlen
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I never think about issues when I'm working on a novel. Issues are things that happen to people in sufficient numbers to elicit widespread attention in other words, they're just life happening. That's what I think about: life, and telling a story.
Anna Quindlen
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The New Testament has had a really powerful effect on how I write and how I live my life.
Anna Quindlen
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And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were.
Anna Quindlen
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A safety net of small white lies can be the bedrock of a successful marriage. You wouldn't believe how cheaply I can do a kitchen renovation.
Anna Quindlen
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In a democratic society, the only treason is silence.
Anna Quindlen
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But never fear, gentlemen castration was really not the point of feminism, and we women are too busy eviscerating one another to take you on.
Anna Quindlen