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My father really, really pushed me to excel in a way that I resented for years and then realized had really worked for me.

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
Years
Really
Way
Resented
Excel
Pushed
Realized
Worked
Father

More quotes by 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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Well, I'd like to think I am, and I'd also like to think that we're all having a lot more fun getting older than we pretend. It was interesting to me when I first started working on this book that I'd mentioned that I was writing a memoir about aging and everybody would moan and groan and carry on.
Anna Quindlen
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A life of unremitting caution, without the carefree - or even, occasionally, the careless - may turn out to be half a life.
Anna Quindlen
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I do not like football, which I think of as a game in which two tractors approach each other from opposite directions and collide. Besides, I have contempt for a game in which players have to wear so much equipment. Men play basketball in their underwear, which seems just right to me.
Anna Quindlen
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I would even go to Washington, which is saying something for me, just to glimpse Jane Q. Public, being sworn in as the first female president of the United States, while her husband holds the Bible and wears a silly pill box hat and matching coat.
Anna Quindlen
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I was doing the family grocery shopping accompanied by two children, an event I hope to see included in the Olympics in the near future.
Anna Quindlen
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And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that.
Anna Quindlen
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I think we now know the limits also of intelligence and rhetoric.
Anna Quindlen
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We are awash in the revealed world.
Anna Quindlen
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Now the baby boomers, i.e., us, are getting older, and were suddenly discovering that there are great things about getting older. You have time for your friendships and you appreciate them in ways that you didn't before.
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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We take our vitamins, we go to exercise class, we put on our seat belts. And then something blindsides us and gives the lie to our carefully constructed facade of safety.
Anna Quindlen
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A finished person is a boring person.
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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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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Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.
Anna Quindlen
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I go online all the time, I just don't read about myself. I read a fashion website called Go Fug Yourself. I actually correspond with the Fug Girls and that's great.
Anna Quindlen
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Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.
Anna Quindlen
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Kids and violent TV, violent TV and violence, violence and kids. The only people missing from this discussion are the parents. Where are we? Gone. Abdicated.
Anna Quindlen
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Writing for UrbanMoms has awarded me a multitude of amazing opportunities. I have traveled to new places alone and with my family. I have discovered new products, new books, new trends and new restaurants, and been able to share them with my readers. I've met other wonderful writers and many incredible celebrities.
Anna Quindlen