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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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I can't begin to predict how news will be delivered to readers in, say, 100 years. But I do know one thing that hasn't changed: Whatever the delivery system, whether it's a magazine, book or blog, people like vivid writing, strong stories and credible people. So while the venue is changing rapidly, human nature isn't, which I find soothing.
Anna Quindlen
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I don't have to listen to the Gospel on Sunday to know the stories of the New Testament. They inform so much of what I write that they're practically like a news scrim that goes through my brain 24/7.
Anna Quindlen
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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.
Anna Quindlen
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All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.
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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I learned that if I ever claim sexual harassment, I will be confronted with every bozo I once dated, every women I once impressedas snotty and superior, and together they will provide a convenient excuse to disbelieve me.
Anna Quindlen
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I love having a president who I think is smarter than I am.
Anna Quindlen
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Loss as muse. Loss as character. Loss as life.
Anna Quindlen
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People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.
Anna Quindlen
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One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.
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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The truth is that when you're writing a novel you're really living in it you're living in the house, and you're living in the town.
Anna Quindlen
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Every reader, I suspect, has a book like this somewhere in his or her past, a book that seemed to hold within it, at that moment, all the mysteries of the universe.
Anna Quindlen
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I hope readers will do what I do when I read a novel I like: talk in ways that will illuminate their own lives.
Anna Quindlen
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Sometimes we don't see out of our peripheral vision what's coming right around the corner.
Anna Quindlen
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There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.
Anna Quindlen
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The closest thing to an outline is, because my memory is so bad now, if something occurs to me that I think might be important or pivotal, a lot of times I'll scribble notes down somewhere until I can get back to the book. Of course half the time I look at those notes the next morning and think, What was that about?
Anna Quindlen
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the joy of someone who had been a reader all her life, whose world had been immeasurably enlarged by the words of others.
Anna Quindlen
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I think there was a long period of time when we got real invested in a youth culture, and not coincidentally it was when the baby boomers, who let's face it, take up a lot of space on the planet, were young.
Anna Quindlen
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Choose the kids. There will be plenty of time later to choose work.
Anna Quindlen