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Thinking Quotes by Anna Quindlen

60 Thinking quotes by Anna Quindlen

All Thinking quotes Anna Quindlen’s page

Anna Quindlen likens sudden change to a fire that bursts through dry wood, overwhelming everything around it. She notes that writing stories where characters are truly happy is especially challenging for authors. She also reflects on motherhood with unwavering positivity and on how people often misjudge their own safety and security.

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I think we now know the limits also of intelligence and rhetoric.

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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 think that we really fool ourselves about our ability to be safe and secure nowadays.

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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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When I write a novel, I have what I think of as an icon that helps get me into the world of…

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Barack Obama presents as kind of a cool character, and I think that that's his natural personality.

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I love having a president who I think is smarter than I am.

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I do think there's some aspect of being a novelist that is a little crazy making.

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And I don't have to listen to a sermon to know what to think or feel about them. It's almost as if…

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I think that anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at…

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I'm very optimistic. I think if you would describe me, my pretty consistent affect is that I'm a pretty happy person.

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These are my words; this is their world, a world in which we can wear our gender on our sleeves, unabashedly, as…

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That's what makes life so hard for women, that instead of thinking that this is the way things are, we always think…

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I sometimes think that courage is the thing that you need more than any other thing. It's fear that cripples us. It's…

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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…

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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 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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Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on…

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Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never,…

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Your kids are launched. You love your work but you understand how to place it in the panorama of the rest of…

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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…

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I sort of feel like it comes around again. That when you get to a certain age, when you've lived enough and…

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Your hair isn't quite right and maybe you're a size bigger than you should be and on and on and on. I…

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Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on…

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

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I think I'm like most novelists in that my books have gotten farther and farther away from autobiography the longer I've been…

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I think there are some stories that need to be told by a specific person as opposed to in the third person.

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I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.

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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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It's an odd kind of feeling because it sort of reminds me of being five again. When you're a five-year-old, you don't…

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I think the very best thing about the internet is that I can read all the London papers every day if I…

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Frankly, I'm mainly telling the story to myself. Thinking about audience is too daunting, and worst case, invites you to homogenize, to…

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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…

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And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were.

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It makes me angry to think that . . . female sanitation workers will spend their days doing a job most of…

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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…

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In the same way the Brits had to get used to the idea that the sun had set on the British Empire,…

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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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I think that after a while you realize that your husband can't be all things to you and certainly you don't want…

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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…