It often seems, looking back, that the unexpected comes to define us, the paths we didn't see coming and may have wandered down by mistake. The older we get the more willing we are to follow those, to surprise ourselves. Anna Quindlen More Quotes by Anna Quindlen More Quotes From Anna Quindlen Frankly, I'm mainly telling the story to myself. Thinking about audience is too daunting, and worst case, invites you to homogenize, to soften the hard edges of things. Anna Quindlen cases stories thinking It's only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions. Anna Quindlen delusion treasure reality Maybe crazy is just the word we use for feelings that will not be contained. Anna Quindlen crazy use feelings But while ignorance can make you insensitive, familiarity can also numb. Entering the second half-century of an information age, our cumulative knowledge has changed the level of what appalls, what stuns, what shocks. Anna Quindlen perception ignorance age Keeping kids safe is sometimes a delusion. The world is a perilous place. Sometimes the kitchen is a perilous place. Anna Quindlen kitchen kids world For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver--that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it. Anna Quindlen notebook trust running The Cairo conferenceis about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored. Anna Quindlen government simple home The Statue of Liberty is meant to be shorthand for a country so unlike its parts that a trip from California to Indiana should require a passport. Anna Quindlen diversity california country We've made hyper motherhood a measure of female success. Anna Quindlen female motherhood made If you raise an intelligent girl she will become a feminist because of the facts of her own life. Raising feminist boys is more difficult. Raising egalitarian boys. One of the reasons you have to raise them that way is because it's better for them. Anna Quindlen intelligent girl boys The victim mentality may be the last uncomplicated thing about life in America. Anna Quindlen literature may america Kids and violent TV, violent TV and violence, violence and kids. The only people missing from this discussion are the parents. Where are we? Gone. Abdicated. Anna Quindlen parent kids people 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. Anna Quindlen romance special rooms Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed. Anna Quindlen ignorant speech reason-why I think the very best thing about the internet is that I can read all the London papers every day if I want to. Anna Quindlen paper want thinking Young men kill someone for a handful of coins, then are remorseless, even casual: Hey, man, things happen. And their parents nab the culprit: it was the city, the cops, the system, the crowd, the music. Anyone but him. Anyone but me. Anna Quindlen cities responsibility men The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific andtorturous, involving and utterly tedious, all at the same time. The world is full of women made to feel strange because what everyone assumes comes naturally is so difficult to do--never mind to do well. Anna Quindlen childhood motherhood jobs She say guilt is a useless emotion." "Oh, please," says Nancy. "Guilt is what separates humans from animals. Anna Quindlen useless guilt animal All of life like a series of tableaux, and in the living we missed so much, hid so much, left so much undone and unsaid. Anna Quindlen unsaid undone left By the time you kill and mount what you catch, it has lost that very thing that made it worth having. I knew this only as a vague sense of disappointment at age 10; not until later did I recognize it as a metaphor for much of life. Anna Quindlen metaphor disappointment age
