Quote

Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.

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
Strong
Always
Life
Straighten
Illusory
Messy
Temptation
Results

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

Image
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
Image
I hope readers will do what I do when I read a novel I like: talk in ways that will illuminate their own lives.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Over the last twenty years, we've changed the world just enough to make it radically different, but not enough to make it work.
Anna Quindlen
Image
One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.
Anna Quindlen
Image
There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I sometimes think that courage is the thing that you need more than any other thing. It's fear that cripples us. It's fear that accounts for racism, it's fear that accounts for sexism, for xenophobia.
Anna Quindlen
Image
If there is anyone who's living the work of the New Testament, it's the nuns of the Catholic church and not the Catholic hierarchy.
Anna Quindlen
Image
London opens to you like a novel itself. [...] It is divided into chapters, the chapters into scenes, the scenes into sentences it opens to you like a series of rooms, door, passsage, door. Mayfair to Piccadilly to Soho to the Strand.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I know a lot and have written a lot and have thought a lot about motherhood.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I think that we really fool ourselves about our ability to be safe and secure nowadays.
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
Image
The one thing that I always got positive reinforcement for from teachers, who really changed my life, was the written word.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Some of the most important lessons I've learned have been from stumbling, and I am deeply grateful that my parents allowed me to fight my own battles.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I got a fortune cookie that said, To remember is to understand. I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.
Anna Quindlen
Image
You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. We human beings are best understood one at a time.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Get a life. A real life. Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Keeping kids safe is sometimes a delusion. The world is a perilous place. Sometimes the kitchen is a perilous place.
Anna Quindlen
Image
If an opportunity scares you, that's God's way of saying you should jump at it.
Anna Quindlen