Quote

You can get rid of the column. It's a little like staying at a hotel you get used to the shape of the room, and then you're gone. With a novel you move into town and stay for a long time. That's both comforting and terrifying.

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
Littles
Room
Terrifying
Little
Stay
Comforting
Novel
Hotel
Long
Rooms
Staying
Time
Move
Town
Like
Gone
Towns
Moving
Shape
Column
Used
Shapes
Columns

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

Image
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
Image
I think Americans suspect, without even being able to articulate it, that we're at the end of the American century that we're at the end of the 100 or 125 or 150 years when we were the undisputed arbiter and leader of the world.
Anna Quindlen
Image
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
Image
I only really understand myself, what I'm really thinking and feelings, when I've talked it over with my circle of female friends. When days go by without that connection, I feel like a radio playing in an empty room.
Anna Quindlen
Image
If God had meant Harvard professors to appear in People magazine, She wouldn't have invented The New York Review of Books.
Anna Quindlen
Image
The difference between government and leadership is that leadership has a soul.
Anna Quindlen
Image
part of the problem with a war on poverty today is that many Americans have decided that being poor is a character defect, not an economic condition.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I think there are some stories that need to be told by a specific person as opposed to in the third person.
Anna Quindlen
Image
I think a lot of people, but particularly a lot of women, get to this stage when I'd say they're over 50. We face a lot of hard judgment from the world, we women. If you're a full-time mother, you should be out working. If you're out working, your kids must be being overlooked.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Barack Obama presents as kind of a cool character, and I think that that's his natural personality.
Anna Quindlen
Image
knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.
Anna Quindlen
Image
So you're getting squeezed at both sides. You're taking care of your mom and dad and you're still doing caregiving with your kids, which is not easy. But I think overall, there's a level of satisfaction that might be unparalleled.
Anna Quindlen
Image
My mother was an incredibly loving mother.
Anna Quindlen
Image
Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers' incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong, who will protect us? If they are not imperfect, how can we equal them?
Anna Quindlen
Image
Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us.
Anna Quindlen
Image
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.
Anna Quindlen
Image
But it's important, while we are supporting lessons in respecting others, to remember that many of our youngest kids need to learn to respect themselves. You learn your worth from the way you are treated.
Anna Quindlen
Image
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
Image
Today is the only guarantee you get.
Anna Quindlen