Quote

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

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

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

Image
Barack Obama is the kind of guy who likes to do things by inches, he's the kind of guy who likes to build consensus and compromise.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I think the very best thing about the internet is that I can read all the London papers every day if I want to.
Anna Quindlen
Image
You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership.
Anna Quindlen
Image
what we call things matters. ... The words we use, and how we perceive those words, reflect how we value, or devalue, people, places, and things.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. We human beings are best understood one at a time.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Speech is the voice of the heart.
Anna Quindlen
Image
If men got pregnant, there would be safe, reliable methods of birth control. They'd be cheap, too.
Anna Quindlen
Image
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.
Anna Quindlen
Image
There's some muscle group around your shoulders that seizes up during the perfection dance and doesn't let go until you are asleep, or alone. Or maybe it never really lets go at all.
Anna Quindlen
Image
We are awash in the revealed world.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I don't really read what people write about me. Someone gives my novel one star are they a troll? Are they someone who hates my politics and so has decided to do that?
Anna Quindlen
Image
Reading is not simply an intellectual pursuit but an emotional and spiritual one. It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self that's why it survives
Anna Quindlen
Image
While liberals had embraced Obama as someone who had left-wing progressive ideas, the truth is that by personality he's a very incremental guy.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I do think that people who are now in their sixties and their seventies are living a different kind of life than their grandparents led, even in these tough times. A lot of them are more active, a lot of them are still working, which was not the case when our grandparents were in their sixties.
Anna Quindlen
Image
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
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
Catastrophe is numerical. Loss is singular, one beloved at a time.
Anna Quindlen
Image
When I quit The New York Times to be a fulltime mother, the voices of the world said I was nuts....But if success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your soul, it is not success at all.
Anna Quindlen
Image
The Church does an enormous amount of good, and it carries one of the most valuable messages imaginable - that you should love your neighbor as yourself, and that if you have two coats you should give one to the man who has none.
Anna Quindlen
Image
The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and tortuous.
Anna Quindlen