I was very driven, very focused, very ambitious. I mean, when I look back on myself in my 20s, part of me just cringes. Anna Quindlen More Quotes by Anna Quindlen More Quotes From Anna Quindlen I go online all the time, I just don't read about myself. I read a fashion website called Go Fug Yourself. I actually correspond with the Fug Girls and that's great. Anna Quindlen online fashion girl New York City has finally hired women to pick up the garbage, which makes sense to me, since, as I've discovered, a good bit of being a woman consists of picking up garbage. Anna Quindlen progress cities new-york I am an affirmative action hire. Anna Quindlen affirmative affirmative-action action It is hard to find someone who will give your children a feeling of security while it lasts and not wound them too much when it isfinished, who will treat those children as if they were her own, but knows--and never forgets--that they are yours. Anna Quindlen feelings giving children You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership. Anna Quindlen suits certain writing 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 opportunity doors years I would even go to Washington, which is saying something for me, just to glimpse Jane Q. Public, being sworn in as the first female president of the United States, while her husband holds the Bible and wears a silly pill box hat and matching coat. Anna Quindlen husband president silly You want to have fun with your kids, and no one has fun with someone who runs roughshod. Anna Quindlen running fun kids I'm boggled by the idea of being an only child. I know nothing at all (I'm happy to say) about having had a cold and withholding mother, about being divorced. The more I've been writing novels, each novel I've written has become successively less grounded in anything approaching autobiography. Anna Quindlen mother writing children In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat. Anna Quindlen sandwiches meat people 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 hierarchy catholic church Loss as muse. Loss as character. Loss as life. Anna Quindlen muse loss character I can't think of a single downside to motherhood now. Anna Quindlen motherhood i-can thinking Choose the kids. There will be plenty of time later to choose work. Anna Quindlen newborn baby kids Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too--unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child's trouble. Anna Quindlen daughter mother children All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading. Anna Quindlen sublime austen reading Adolescence is a tough time for parent and child alike. It is a time between: between childhood and maturity, between parental protection and personal responsibility, between life stage- managed by grown-ups and life privately held. Anna Quindlen maturity responsibility children 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. Anna Quindlen wedding numbers men Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it. Anna Quindlen writing people thinking 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. Anna Quindlen life-lesson mother men
