In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself. Anna Quindlen More Quotes by Anna Quindlen More Quotes From Anna Quindlen People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. Of all the words that have stuck to the ribs of my soul, poetry has been the most filling. Anna Quindlen wine heart running ... It was the idea of facing a future skimming the surface of life, winging my way in and out of other people's crises, confusions, and passages, engaging them enough to get the story, but never enough to be indelibly touched by what I had seen or heard. Anna Quindlen confusion people ideas I do not like football, which I think of as a game in which two tractors approach each other from opposite directions and collide. Besides, I have contempt for a game in which players have to wear so much equipment. Men play basketball in their underwear, which seems just right to me. Anna Quindlen basketball player football A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world. Anna Quindlen always-working stores world [President Johnson] had the political will to say that having one in five Americans living in the kind of abject conditions their fellow citizens associated with Third World countries and the novels of Dickens was as dangerous as any battlefield enemy. Anna Quindlen political-will country enemy I don't understand how people learn to live in the world if they haven't had siblings. Everything I learned about negotiation, territoriality, coexistence, dislike, inbred differences and love despite knowledge I learned from my four younger siblings. Anna Quindlen sibling differences people high fashion has little to do with what women wear and a lot to do with what retailers mark down later. Anna Quindlen mark fashion littles I went to a women's college. ... it was a little like learning to swim while holding on to the side of the pool; I didn't learn the arm movements until after I graduated, but by that time I was one hell of a kicker. Anna Quindlen college swim education knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us. Anna Quindlen mortality greatest-gifts giving So carry your courage in an easily accessible place, the way you do your cellphone or your wallet. You may still falter or fail, but you always know that you pushed hard and aimed high. Take a leap of faith. Fear not. Courage is the ultimate career move. Anna Quindlen leap-of-faith careers moving I don't do research for my novels. Obviously, in my other line of work as a reporter and a columnist, I've had the opportunity to get to know both social workers and TV talk-show hosts. Anna Quindlen lines research opportunity It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the pale new growth on an evergreen, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the colour of our kids’ eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. Unless you know there is a clock ticking. Anna Quindlen eye kids fall All the things we don’t say, all the words we swallow, and it makes nothing but trouble. Anna Quindlen trouble Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me. Anna Quindlen grateful mother children I'm going to live long enough to live in an America that will assume universal health care is a basic right. That will be amusing and terrific. Anna Quindlen care long america 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. Anna Quindlen father children years If men got pregnant, there would be safe, reliable methods of birth control. They'd be cheap, too. Anna Quindlen birth-control would-be men Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts. Anna Quindlen comes-and-goes fashion lasts If I waited long enough and said, "Okay, so what you're saying is you liked your life a lot better when you were 30?" everybody would get real quiet and then admit that that wasn't the case, that they really felt like they were sort of growing into themselves in a way. Anna Quindlen growing real long I don't know what I would do in the world without [female friends] for advice, for comfort, for simply knowing that there is someone out there who knows me as I am, and loves me despite and because of it. Anna Quindlen mom knowing advice
