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

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
Illusory
Messy
Temptation
Results
Strong
Always
Life
Straighten

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

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All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.
Anna Quindlen
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I think when people keep saying to you, You're good at this, you just keep doing it.
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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I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
Anna Quindlen
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Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off by myself with a book than do any of the dozens of things that children usually do to amuse themselves. I never aged out of it.
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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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
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I think there was a long period of time when we got real invested in a youth culture, and not coincidentally it was when the baby boomers, who let's face it, take up a lot of space on the planet, were young.
Anna Quindlen
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Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.
Anna Quindlen
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Parents have railed against shelters near schools, but no one has made any connection between the crazed consumerism of our kids and their elders' cold unconcern toward others. Maybe the homeless are not the only ones who need to spend time in these places to thaw out.
Anna Quindlen
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I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth.
Anna Quindlen
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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
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A life of unremitting caution, without the carefree - or even, occasionally, the careless - may turn out to be half a life.
Anna Quindlen
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I was doing the family grocery shopping accompanied by two children, an event I hope to see included in the Olympics in the near future.
Anna Quindlen
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I'm just remembering myself at 22 or 23. I was all engine and no steering. (Laughter) I had the wheels but I had no steering. I do think it's true that when you're younger, you're more likely to listen to all the naysayers, and people are always telling you how you ought to behave and what kind of job you should get and how you should look.
Anna Quindlen
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Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.
Anna Quindlen
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It makes me angry to think that . . . female sanitation workers will spend their days doing a job most of their co-workers think they can't handle, and then they will go home and do another job most of their co-workers don't want.
Anna Quindlen
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Prosecutors insist they are mounting a thorough investigation, which sometimes means thorough and sometimes, historically, has meant long enough to let the fire burn down in an incendiary case. A thorough investigation is fine an interminable one is disgraceful.
Anna Quindlen
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Your hair isn't quite right and maybe you're a size bigger than you should be and on and on and on. I think there comes a moment when you've matured to the point where you suddenly think, nonsense. I am fine just the way I am.
Anna Quindlen
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Speech is the voice of the heart.
Anna Quindlen