Anna Quindlen Quotes

Author Image

Anna Quindlen

Profession : Journalist

Birth : July 8, 1953

After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'

Anna Quindlen

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

Anna Quindlen

If I get the forty additional years statisticians say are likely coming to me, I could fit in at least one, maybe two new lifetimes. Sad that only one of those lifetimes can include being the mother of young children.

Anna Quindlen

The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male and the other female.

Anna Quindlen

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

Anna Quindlen

Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.

Anna Quindlen

Life is not so much about beginnings and endings as it is about going on and on and on. It is about muddling through the middle.

Anna Quindlen

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

Anna Quindlen

Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around.

Anna Quindlen

Raising a child is a little like Picasso's work; in the beginning he did very conventional representational things. Cubism came after he had the rules down pat.

Anna Quindlen

The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.

Anna Quindlen

If there is anyone who's living the work of the New Testament, it's the nuns of the Catholic church and not the Catholic hierarchy.

Anna Quindlen

Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.

Anna Quindlen

There is something so settled and stodgy about turning a great romance into next of kin on an emergency room form, and something so soothing and special, too.

Anna Quindlen

Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed.

Anna Quindlen

I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.

Anna Quindlen

I once wanted to be a personage. Now I am comfortable being a person.

Anna Quindlen

A finished person is a boring person.

Anna Quindlen

Here is the real domino theory - gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby, they all fall down and someday it will come to you.

Anna Quindlen

The problem... is emblematic of what hasn't changed during the equal opportunity revolution of the last 20 years. Doors opened; opportunities evolved. Law, institutions, corporations moved forward. But many minds did not.

Anna Quindlen