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I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and one of the things I like to say is that one of the biggest impediments I had to becoming a successful writer is I had a very happy childhood.

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
Successful
Impediments
Happy
Philadelphia
Things
Suburbs
Like
Biggest
Childhood
Writer
Becoming
Grew

More quotes by 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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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
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Sure smokers have made personal choices. And they pay for those choices every day, whether sitting through an airline flight dyingfor a smoke, or dying for a smoke in the oncology wing of a hospital. The tobacco companies have not paid nearly enough for the killing.
Anna Quindlen
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The New Testament has had a really powerful effect on how I write and how I live my life.
Anna Quindlen
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It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.
Anna Quindlen
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The difference between government and leadership is that leadership has a soul.
Anna Quindlen
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Obama doesn't seem like a burger and a beer kind of guy. I have to say, I don't find that problematic at all.
Anna Quindlen
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Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
Anna Quindlen
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In a democratic society, the only treason is silence.
Anna Quindlen
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Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.
Anna Quindlen
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February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.
Anna Quindlen
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the most sacred business of judges is not to ratify the will of the majority but to protect the minority from its tyranny.
Anna Quindlen
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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
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When you look at the women that have made a real difference in the world throughout history, what they’ve done has almost always been defined by fearlessness. That’s something I came to at a certain point I wish I’d come to it younger. Stop looking over your shoulder — there’s nobody who matters back there.
Anna Quindlen
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I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.
Anna Quindlen
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With reference to the younger generation...If the experience of their exhausted, insomniac, dispirited elders makes them decide they'd prefer not to go straight from the classroom to the cubicle to the coffin, it doesn't mean they're lazy. It means they're sane.
Anna Quindlen
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Your kids are launched. You love your work but you understand how to place it in the panorama of the rest of your life. There's this line in the book, and when I wrote it I thought yes, that's it - if you think of life as a job, maybe by the time you get to, say, in my case, 60, you've finally gotten good at it.
Anna Quindlen
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It is so easy to exist instead of live.
Anna Quindlen
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The one thing that I always got positive reinforcement for from teachers, who really changed my life, was the written word.
Anna Quindlen
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Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.
Anna Quindlen