Quotes by Anna Quindlen

.. at a certain age we learned to see right through it, and that age is now.

New York City has finally hired women to pick up the garbage, which makes sense to me, since, as Ive discovered, a good bit of being a woman consists of picking up garbage.

In England I am always madam; I arrived too late to ever be a miss. In New York I have only been madamed once, by the doorman at the Carlyle Hotel.

You can tell a really wonderful quote by the fact that its attributed to a whole raft of wits.

My child looked at me and I looked back at him in the delivery room and I realized that out of a sea of infinite possibilities it had come down to this: a specific person born on the hottest day of the year conceived on a Christmas Eve made by his father and me miraculously from scratch.

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

A finished person is a boring person.

But its important, while we are supporting lessons in respecting others, to remember that many of our youngest kids need to learn to respect themselves. You learn your worth from the way you are treated.

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.

Im sure not afraid of success and Ive learned not to be afraid of failure. The only thing Im afraid of now is of being someone I dont like much.

Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once theyve learned the rules.

I realized that, while I would never be my mother nor have her life, the lesson she had left me was that it was possible to love and care for a man and still have at your core a strength so great that you never even needed to put it on display.

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?

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, Im enough.

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 thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

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

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

There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.