Anna Marie Quindlen (b July 8, 1952) is an American author, journalist, and opinion columnist whose New York Times column, Public and Private, won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992. She began her journalism career in 1974 as a reporter for the New York Post. Between 1977 and 1994 she held several posts at The New York Times. (Click for full Wikipedia article.)
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A finished person is a boring person.
Acts of bravery don't always take place on battlefields. They can take place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations, and yes, your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world.
And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that.
But never fear, gentlemen; castration was really not the point of feminism, and we women are too busy eviscerating one another to take you on.
Catastrophe is numerical. Loss is singular, one beloved at a time.
Control is a nice concept, little more.
[Dr. Seuss] is remembered for the murder of Dick and Jane, which was a mercy killing of the highest order.
For the young the days go fast and the years go slow; for the old the days go slow and the years go fast.
Guilt is what separates humans from animals.
Have you ever noticed that what passes as a terrific man would only be an adequate woman?
Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning.
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.
I have a cat, the pet that ranks just above a throw pillow in terms of required responsibility.
I know from experience that those least capable of truly assessing any marriage are the children who come out of it. We style them as we need them, to excuse our faults, to insulate ourselves from our own expendability or indispensability.
I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
It's only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.
Maybe crazy is just the word we use for feelings that will not be contained.
New York City has finally hired women to pick up the garbage, which makes sense to me, since, as I've discovered, a good bit of being a woman consists of picking up garbage.
One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.
Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.
People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs.
The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed.
The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them. No one does the right thing out of fear.
There's something undeniable about the posture of a person trying not to acknowledge your existance.
This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet.
We're part of a mixed marriage: he's male, I'm female.
What I expect from my male friends is that they are polite and clean. What I expect from my female friends is unconditional love, the ability to finish my sentences for me when I am sobbing, a complete and total willingness to pour their hearts out to me, and the ability to tell me why the meat thermometer isn't supposed to touch the bone.
What is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
When you really want to say no, say no. You can't do everything- or at least not well.
You can tell a really wonderful quote by the fact that it's attributed to a whole raft of wits.
You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.
Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.
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