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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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Anna Quindlen
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: July 8
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Anna Marie Quindlen
Sometimes
Stereotype
Grain
Ignore
Individuality
Misshapen
Complexity
Sandy
Center
Stereotypes
Truth
Ethnic
Change
Pearls

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

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Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
Anna Quindlen
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There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays.
Anna Quindlen
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Not writing at all leads to nothing.
Anna Quindlen
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Like cellulite creams or hair-loss tonics, capital punishment is one of those panaceas that isn't. Only it costs a whole lot more.
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've been a feminist since I was a teenager, but originally it was because I wanted to make the world a better place for me.
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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It's only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.
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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The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible that is, that one is male and the other female.
Anna Quindlen
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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.
Anna Quindlen
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I feel about exercise the same way that I feel about a few other things: that there is nothing wrong with it if it is done in private by consenting adults.
Anna Quindlen
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If we really feel like we're comfortable in our own skins now, we have a longer period of time to live out that kind of third or fourth act of our life.
Anna Quindlen
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Each instance of sexual harassment has to be judged on its merits. Facts, timing, motives, credibility: all must be considered before we make up our own minds what to believe.
Anna Quindlen
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The closest thing to an outline is, because my memory is so bad now, if something occurs to me that I think might be important or pivotal, a lot of times I'll scribble notes down somewhere until I can get back to the book. Of course half the time I look at those notes the next morning and think, What was that about?
Anna Quindlen
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The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.
Anna Quindlen
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This is why I had children: to offer them a perfect dream of childhood that can fill their souls as they grow older.
Anna Quindlen
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The problem... is emblematic of what hasn't changed during the equal opportunity revolution of the last 20 years. Doors opened opportunities evolved. Law, institutions, corporations moved forward. But many minds did not.
Anna Quindlen
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I'm boggled by the idea of being an only child. I know nothing at all (I'm happy to say) about having had a cold and withholding mother, about being divorced. The more I've been writing novels, each novel I've written has become successively less grounded in anything approaching autobiography.
Anna Quindlen
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Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement. It would be wonderful if they came to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead now, that won’t happen. We have to teach ourselves how to make room for them, to love them, and to live, really live.
Anna Quindlen