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People Quotes by Anna Quindlen

47 People quotes by Anna Quindlen

All People quotes Anna Quindlen’s page

Anna Quindlen writes that creating a story where everyone is truly happy can be one of the hardest tasks for an author. She warns that people who chase perfection often feel trapped by their own high expectations. She also points out that parents who mock gay people may be hurting their own children without realizing it.

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Reading is another thing that has made me more human by exposing me to worlds I might never have entered and people…

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Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it.

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I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly…

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All parents should be aware that when they mock or curse gay people, they may be mocking or cursing their own child.

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If God had meant Harvard professors to appear in People magazine, She wouldn't have invented The New York Review of Books.

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People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage…

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I think when people keep saying to you, "You're good at this," you just keep doing it.

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The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male…

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I think a lot of people, but particularly a lot of women, get to this stage when I'd say they're over 50.…

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For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver--that is, a reporter. I made people like me,…

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Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off…

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People ask me all the time if I'm from a family of writers. The literal short answer is no, but my father…

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Now, a lot of people are challenged by the fact that a record number of people in their sixties have living parents,…

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I'm just remembering myself at 22 or 23. I was all engine and no steering. (Laughter) I had the wheels but I…

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an the president bring out the voters who were so enthusiastic about him in 2008 and seem a little disenchanted now? Can…

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You realize that especially when you're writing a book like this, looking back on your life, that there's just such a depth…

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I think at every moment in the last probably 100 years, when the institutional church had the opportunity to do the right…

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What usually happens is that when I'm nearing the end of one novel a vague idea about what I want to do…

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So I do think sometimes the political mechanism is completely disconnected from the people. However, what I will say is that history…

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People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust,…

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Women writers of all people should know better than to pigeonhole women, put them in little groups, the smart one, the sweet…

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I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are…

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I don't really read what people write about me. Someone gives my novel one star; are they a troll? Are they someone…

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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…

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those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about…

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I think the last couple of years of life for many, many people are the same as they were 50, 60, 70…

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Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people…

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On social welfare the Church does so much good around the world - nuns running schools and homeless shelters, priests ministering to…

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what we call things matters. ... The words we use, and how we perceive those words, reflect how we value, or devalue,…

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I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters…

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In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle…

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People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage…

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I conveniently forgot to remember that people only have two hands, or, as another parent once said of having a third child,…

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Somewhere between a third and a quarter of all people living in America today were born between 1946 and 1965 and if…

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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…

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I know that it's very dispiriting for people in their twenties, who expected to graduate from college, get their own apartments, get…

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The problem with freedom is that you just can't go back. Once people see what it means to be free people, you…

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Trying to be perfect may be inevitable for people who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and its good…

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When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job,…

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I don't understand how people learn to live in the world if they haven't had siblings. Everything I learned about negotiation, territoriality,…

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More by Anna Quindlen

I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write,…

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…

Sometimes change came all at once, with a sound like a fire taking hold of dry wood and paper, with a roar that rose…

Loss as muse. Loss as character. Loss as life.

knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us.

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…

Every reader, I suspect, has a book like this somewhere in his or her past, a book that seemed to hold within it, at…

“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…

A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement.

“In England I am always madam; I arrived too late to ever be a miss. In New York I have only been madamed once,…

“Yet there was always in me, even when I was very small, the sense that I ought to be somewhere else. And wander I…

I can't think of a single downside to motherhood now.

It would take a helluva man to replace no man at all.

Not writing at all leads to nothing.

Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. "Book love," Trollope called it. "It will make your hours pleasant to…