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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

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Anna Quindlen
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: July 8
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Anna Marie Quindlen
Thinking
Accounts
Courage
Fear
Need
Sometimes
Xenophobia
Needs
Cripples
Thing
Sexism
Think
Racism

More quotes by Anna Quindlen

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I conveniently forgot to remember that people only have two hands, or, as another parent once said of having a third child, it's time for a zone defense instead of man-to-man.
Anna Quindlen
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Barack Obama is the kind of guy who likes to do things by inches, he's the kind of guy who likes to build consensus and compromise.
Anna Quindlen
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Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games. In my religion, martyrs die.
Anna Quindlen
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People always blame the girl she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it.
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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We're tortured, a lot of us, believe me.
Anna Quindlen
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Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden intohistory, it is the stories we didn't write, the questions we didn't ask that prove far, far more damaging than the ones we did.
Anna Quindlen
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When children are small, parents should run their lives and not the other way around.
Anna Quindlen
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The reason child care is such a loaded issue is that when we talk about it, we are always tacitly talking about motherhood. And when we're talking about motherhood we're always tacitly assuming that child care must be a very dim second to full-time mother care.
Anna Quindlen
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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.
Anna Quindlen
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I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.
Anna Quindlen
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I think what saved me, as a writer, is that there are really two breaking points in my life. One was when I was 19 and my mother died, and one was when I was 31 and my first child was born. And that sort of gave me a kind of rebirth that I think has been invaluable to me as a novelist, in terms of seeing the world anew.
Anna Quindlen
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The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.
Anna Quindlen
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I do tend to be almost kind of Pollyanna-ish person.
Anna Quindlen
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If I waited long enough and said, Okay, so what you're saying is you liked your life a lot better when you were 30? everybody would get real quiet and then admit that that wasn't the case, that they really felt like they were sort of growing into themselves in a way.
Anna Quindlen
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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
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God bless the physician who warms the speculum or holds your hand and looks into your eyes. Perhaps one subtext of the health caredebate is a yen to be treated like a whole person, not just an eye, an ear, a nose or a throat. A yen to be human again, on the part of patient and doctor alike.
Anna Quindlen
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Wow, so much of the way I've transacted my life... so much of the results that I'm happy about are because of what Daddy did.
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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In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat.
Anna Quindlen