Quote

But while ignorance can make you insensitive, familiarity can also numb. Entering the second half-century of an information age, our cumulative knowledge has changed the level of what appalls, what stuns, what shocks.

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
Half
Level
Cumulative
Also
Second
Insensitive
Make
Levels
Numb
Changed
Familiarity
Century
Entering
Information
Shock
Appalls
Age
Perception
Stuns
Knowledge
Ignorance
Shocks

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

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It often seems, looking back, that the unexpected comes to define us, the paths we didn't see coming and may have wandered down by mistake. The older we get the more willing we are to follow those, to surprise ourselves.
Anna Quindlen
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There is something so settled and stodgy about turning a great romance into next of kin on an emergency room form, and something so soothing and special, too.
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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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
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Real friends offer both hard truths and soft landings and realize that it's sometimes more important to be nice than to be honest.
Anna Quindlen
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The gender gap looks at this point like it's going to favor the president, particularly among white suburban women. I certainly think it's going to be an issue. But I think the single most important thing in this election will be turnout.
Anna Quindlen
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My most pronounced writing habit is trying not to write.
Anna Quindlen
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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.
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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Those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers.
Anna Quindlen
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You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.
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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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
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I never think about issues when I'm working on a novel. Issues are things that happen to people in sufficient numbers to elicit widespread attention in other words, they're just life happening. That's what I think about: life, and telling a story.
Anna Quindlen
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So much of what you take for granted is the bedrock of happiness.
Anna Quindlen
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Poor kids are much more likely to become sick than their richer counterparts, but much less likely to have health insurance. Talk about a double whammy.
Anna Quindlen
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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.
Anna Quindlen
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Here is the real domino theory - gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby, they all fall down and someday it will come to you.
Anna Quindlen
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Maybe someday it will seem quaint that, during a time of plague, some of the parents of the 1990s wanted to deny their children protection so that they could safeguard their own self- image. Or maybe we'll just seem like a bunch of lunatics.
Anna Quindlen
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I really feel like if you can get past your fear, if you can say, Uh-uh, I'm afraid to do that and I'm going to do it anyhow, that that's really the way to have a satisfying life moving forward. I think I had that kind of fearlessness even as a young person. It wasn't tempered by experience or wisdom, but it took me a long way.
Anna Quindlen