When I write a novel, I have what I think of as an icon that helps get me into the world of… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
The truth is that when you're writing a novel you're really living in it; you're living in the house, and you're living… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I know a lot and have written a lot and have thought a lot about motherhood. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
The New Testament has had a really powerful effect on how I write and how I live my life. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“There are only two ways, really, to become a writer. One is to write. The other is to read.” — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I hadn't written a love story before and I hadn't written a novel with a happy ending before. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
People ask me all the time if I'm from a family of writers. The literal short answer is no, but my father… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
You realize that especially when you're writing a book like this, looking back on your life, that there's just such a depth… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden intohistory, it… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I couldn't figure out how you could be a novelist and make any… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
The beginning and the end are never really the journey of discovery for me. It is the middle that remains a puzzle… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
the more humdrum aspects of life do not make for gripping reading. To render them compelling, a writer must describe the universal… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
At the same time that you've got to open yourself up to the fact that experience is going to teach you year… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
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… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“Who says great literatue has to be written by men? Who says great literature has to be about scary, creepy stuff like… — 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
The 1992 US Olympic basketball team is the best sports team ever, the equivalent of rounding up the greatest American writers of… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Uncontrollable consumerism has become a watchword of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end. The United States has more… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“I've discovered that sometimes writing badly can eventually lead to something better. Not writing at all leads to nothing.” — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Women writers of all people should know better than to pigeonhole women, put them in little groups, the smart one, the sweet… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I think I'm like most novelists in that my books have gotten farther and farther away from autobiography the longer I've been… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I don't really read what people write about me. Someone gives my novel one star; are they a troll? Are they someone… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
Novels are usually built on conflict, sometimes very, very difficult conflict. It's why men write war novels - because there you go,… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
I don't have to listen to the Gospel on Sunday to know the stories of the New Testament. They inform so much… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
The age of technology has both revived the use of writing and provided ever more reasons for its spiritual solace. Emails are… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
We are writers. We danced with words, as children, in what became familiar patterns. The words became our friends and our companions,… — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
“I know who we are, and how we got that way. We are writers. We danced with the words, as children, in… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us. — Anna Quindlen Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
