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What had I expected of the first child? Everything. Rocket scientist. Neurosurgeon. Designated hitter. We talked wisely at cocktail parties about the sad mistake our mothers had made in pinning all their hopes and dreams on us. We were full of it.

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
Children
Full
Mothers
Neurosurgeons
Made
Child
Talked
Designated
Party
Hopes
Hitter
Mother
Parties
Cocktail
Dream
Scientist
Rocket
Firsts
Expected
Cocktails
Everything
Dreams
Rockets
Neurosurgeon
First
Mistake
Wisely
Pinning

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I don't do research for my novels. Obviously, in my other line of work as a reporter and a columnist, I've had the opportunity to get to know both social workers and TV talk-show hosts.
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Get a life. A real life. Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.
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On social welfare the Church does so much good around the world - nuns running schools and homeless shelters, priests ministering to people who are in crisis.
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I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
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I'm writing this memoir from the perspective of somebody who's prosperous and has means. Having said that, one of the things that I think I discovered about those additional years is that I don't think they really are added to the end of life.
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It is so easy to exist instead of live.
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The Statue of Liberty is meant to be shorthand for a country so unlike its parts that a trip from California to Indiana should require a passport.
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Predictions that unit cohesion could not survive honesty about sexual orientation were simply wrong. What does threaten morale arethe prolonged investigations, the questioning of friends and co-workers, the searches of barracks for magazines and letters, the witch hunts.
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We almost manage to forget that things happen that we don't anticipate.
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It is this that, finally, I will try to teach my sons about sex, after I've explained fertile periods and birth control and all the other mechanics that are important to understand but never really go to the heart of the matter: I believe I will say that when you sleep with someone you take off a lot more than your clothes.
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an the president bring out the voters who were so enthusiastic about him in 2008 and seem a little disenchanted now? Can he bring out young people? Can he bring out Latinos? Can he bring out those white suburban moms?
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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.
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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.
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All parents should be aware that when they mock or curse gay people, they may be mocking or cursing their own child.
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People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.
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I'll tell you the truth - I went to a women's college, Barnard, the most selective college for women in America today. If there's one thing I came out of Barnard with, because it was a women's college and a great institution of higher education, it was fearlessness.
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I like to say that my mother had a very ordinary life. From the outside it didn't look like there was anything particularly special or wonderful about it, but when you watch somebody hold on to that life with both hands, it makes you think that life must be pretty damn good.
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I'm going to live long enough to live in an America that will assume universal health care is a basic right. That will be amusing and terrific.
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It's important to remember that feminism is no longer a group of organizations or leaders. It's the expectations that parents have for their daughters, and their sons, too. It's the way we talk about and treat one another. It's who makes the money and who makes the compromises and who makes dinner. It's a state of mind. It's the way we live now.
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New York is a city where it's particularly hard to be poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is part of its identity.
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