The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. - Anna Quindlen
The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and torturous. - Anna Quindlen
Women are the glue that hold our day-to-day world together. - Anna Quindlen
I came to the realization that there were certain public issues that were most usefully dealt with within some sort of framework of at least my private beliefs, if not my private life. - Anna Quindlen
I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. - Anna Quindlen
It turned out that when my younger self thought of taking wing, she wanted only to let her spirit soar. Books are the plane, the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home. - Anna Quindlen
If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all. - Anna Quindlen
Speech is the voice of the heart. - Anna Quindlen
But never fear, gentlemen; castration was really not the point of feminism, and we women are too busy eviscerating one another to take you on. - Anna Quindlen
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. - Anna Quindlen
A finished person is a boring person. - Anna Quindlen
Or what about the statue in California currently said to be crying bloody tears? Why worry about the alleged weeping of a plaster effigy when so many actual human beings have reason to cry? - Anna Quindlen
It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. - Anna Quindlen
When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. - Anna Quindlen
You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are. - Anna Quindlen
All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough. - Anna Quindlen
Think of life as a terminal illness, because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived. - Anna Quindlen
The truth about your own life is not always easy to accept, and sometimes hasn't even occurred to you. - Anna Quindlen
I think that anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy. - Anna Quindlen
O ye of little faith, who believe that somehow the birth of Christ is dependent upon acknowledgment in a circular from OfficeMax! - Anna Quindlen
Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That's what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first. - Anna Quindlen
.. at a certain age we learned to see right through it, and that age is now. - Anna Quindlen
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. - Anna Quindlen
I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think interior decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. - Anna Quindlen
Sometimes I live so much in my mind that I forget what is right before my eyes. - Anna Quindlen
I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society. - Anna Quindlen
Reading is not simply an intellectual pursuit but an emotional and spiritual one. It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self; that's why it survives."[Turning the Page: The future of reading is backlit and bright, Newsweek Magazine, March 25, 2010] - Anna Quindlen
I prize my downtime, count on it as a writer, a parent, a person. Sometimes I think of Woody Allen's remark about masturbation, that it is sex with someone he loves. I feel as though being alone is hanging out with someone I like. - Anna Quindlen
A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement. - Anna Quindlen
It's amazing how resilient people are, and how the things that didn't come true become,after a while, simply the way things are. - Anna Quindlen