Quotes from 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.

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

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

A finished person is a boring person.

America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.

Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.

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.

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

If men got pregnant, there would be safe, reliable methods of birth control. They'd be cheap, too.

One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.

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

high fashion has little to do with what women wear and a lot to do with what retailers mark down later.

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.'

Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.

You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.

All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women.

Choose the kids. There will be plenty of time later to choose work.

Over the last twenty years, we've changed the world just enough to make it radically different, but not enough to make it work.

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.

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.

I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

I do a lot of mental work before I ever start writing.

Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers' incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong, who will protect us? If they are not imperfect, how can we equal them?

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.