Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
My father really, really pushed me to excel in a way that I resented for years and then realized had really worked… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“There is so much obligatory generosity to being a good mother, a good wife, a good friend. Solitude is an acceptable form… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
All parents should be aware that when they mock or curse gay people, they may be mocking or cursing their own child. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
My father expected his first child to be a boy, and when it didn't turn out that way he didn't let the… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Kids and violent TV, violent TV and violence, violence and kids. The only people missing from this discussion are the parents. Where… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
The women of my mother's generation had, in the main, only one decision to make about their lives: who they would marry.… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous,… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I realized that, while I would never be my mother nor have her life, the lesson she had left me was that… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
being a parent is not transaction ... we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: we are… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“I mark my years or parenting by the people who stepped in and forced me to abandon my inclination to meddle, micromanage,… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I think a lot of people, but particularly a lot of women, get to this stage when I'd say they're over 50.… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
The reason child care is such a loaded issue is that when we talk about it, we are always tacitly talking about… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Reading has always been life unwrapped to me, a way of understanding the world and understanding myself through both the unknown and… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“I think that the people I know now believe I went home to take care of my mother because I loved her.… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I think the gift of my mother's death, if anything so terrible can be said to have an upside to it, is… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept,… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“[B]oth my husband and I are the eldest in largish families and both of us had childhoods punctuated by pregnancies, the weeklong… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. … I did not live in… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
[After my mother died, I had a feeling that was] not unlike the homesickness that always filled me for the first few… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
When an actress takes off her clothes onscreen but a nursing mother is told to leave, what message do we send about… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“Coincidentally the couple who had endowed it had lived in her parents’ building. They had had an eight-year-old with a pretty singing… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“That was the old Ellen Gulden, the girl who would walk over her mother in golf shoes, who scared students away from… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“Our parents are never people to us, never, they're always traits, Achilles' heels, dim nightmares, vocal tics, bad noses, hot tears, all… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
When an actress takes off her clothes onscreen but a nursing mother is told to leave, what message do we send about… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Don't ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: "If you win the rat race, you're… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
When children are small, parents should run their lives and not the other way around. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Some of the most important lessons I've learned have been from stumbling, and I am deeply grateful that my parents allowed me… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Here is the real domino theory - gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby,… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers' incredible strength. We fear… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I'm boggled by the idea of being an only child. I know nothing at all (I'm happy to say) about having had… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
When I quit The New York Times to be a fulltime mother, the voices of the world said I was nuts…But if… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“As I looked at [my future husband] I realized that, while I would never be my mother nor have her life, the… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Parents have railed against shelters near schools, but no one has made any connection between the crazed consumerism of our kids and… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write,… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share
Trying to be perfect may be inevitable for people who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and its good opinion...What is… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share
Sometimes change came all at once, with a sound like a fire taking hold of dry wood and paper, with a roar that rose… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share
You teach your 16-year-old with your heart in your mouth to be a good driver and none of that makes any difference when some… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share
Every reader, I suspect, has a book like this somewhere in his or her past, a book that seemed to hold within it, at… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share
“I’ve finally recognized my body for what it is: a personality-delivery system, designed expressly to carry my character from place to place, now and… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share
“In England I am always madam; I arrived too late to ever be a miss. In New York I have only been madamed once,… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share
“Yet there was always in me, even when I was very small, the sense that I ought to be somewhere else. And wander I… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share
Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. "Book love," Trollope called it. "It will make your hours pleasant to… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share
![“The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops.” quote by Anna Quindlen](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/205/anna-quindlen-467_apples_the-great-motherhood-friendships-are-the_1032177.png)
![“[B]oth my husband and I are the eldest in largish families and both of us had childhoods punctuated by pregnancies, the weeklong disappearance of our mothers, and the arrival of yet another lozenge of a receiving blanket with a red face and a querulous cry. But being supplanted by babies was quite…” quote by Anna Quindlen](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/ffd/anna-quindlen-467_childhood_b-oth-my-husband-and-i-are-the-eldest-in_1137585.png)
![“The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. … I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the…” quote by Anna Quindlen](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/237/anna-quindlen-467_biggest-mistake_the-biggest-mistake-i-made-as-a-parent-i_2065053.jpg)
![“[After my mother died, I had a feeling that was] not unlike the homesickness that always filled me for the first few days when I went to stay at my grandparents'' house, and even, I was stunned to discover, during the first few months of my freshman year at college. It was not really the home my…” quote by Anna Quindlen](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/ab8/anna-quindlen-467_children_after-my-mother-died-i-had-a-feeling-tha_2710339.jpg)
![“As I looked at [my future husband] I realized that, while I would never be my mother nor have her life, the lesson she had left was that it was possible to love and care for a man and still have at your core a strength so great that you never even needed to put it on display.” quote by Anna Quindlen](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/b66/anna-quindlen-467_future-husband_as-i-looked-at-my-future-husband-i-reali_770170.png)
