Life is not so much about beginnings and endings as it is about going on and on and on. It is about muddling through the middle. Anna Quindlen More Quotes by Anna Quindlen More Quotes From Anna Quindlen Reading has always been life unwrapped to me, a way of understanding the world and understanding myself through both the unknown and the everyday. If being a parent consists often of passing along chunks of ourselves to unwitting-often unwilling-recipients, then books are, for me, one of the simplest and most sure-fire ways of doing that. Anna Quindlen reading fire book So much of what you take for granted is the bedrock of happiness. Anna Quindlen bedrock granted happiness Decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. Anna Quindlen reading-books independent-bookstores children My sister is a public school teacher. She makes far far less money than I do, and gets almost no public attention for her work. Yet I believe what she does is infinitely more important and more difficult than what I do. Anna Quindlen teacher believe school Familiarity breeds content. Anna Quindlen familiarity There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger. Anna Quindlen spoons gun world Down time is where we become ourselves... a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity. Anna Quindlen boredom creativity moving Hospitals are a little like the beach. The next wave comes in, and the footprints of your pain and suffering, your delivery and recovery, are obliterated. Anna Quindlen recovery pain beach There are a million moving parts to raising kids, and you can't always anticipate them all, especially when they are teenagers and their peers play such a huge role in their lives. If you offer independence, there is one kind of pitfall; if you shelter them too much, there is another. And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that. Anna Quindlen teenager kids moving These are my words; this is their world, a world in which we can wear our gender on our sleeves, unabashedly, as we go about the business of thinking out loud. Anna Quindlen gender world thinking Women are the glue that holds our day-to-day world together. Anna Quindlen glue together world This is why I had children: to offer them a perfect dream of childhood that can fill their souls as they grow older. Anna Quindlen perfect dream children Ask any woman how she makes it through the day, and she may mention her calendar, her to-do lists, her babysitter. But if you push her on how she really makes it through her day, she will mention her girlfriends. Anna Quindlen calendars girlfriend may I remember adolescence, the years of having the impulse control of a mousetrap, of being as private as a safe-deposit box. Anna Quindlen impulse-control safe years God bless the physician who warms the speculum or holds your hand and looks into your eyes. Perhaps one subtext of the health caredebate is a yen to be treated like a whole person, not just an eye, an ear, a nose or a throat. A yen to be human again, on the part of patient and doctor alike. Anna Quindlen medicine eye hands I hope readers will do what I do when I read a novel I like: talk in ways that will illuminate their own lives. Anna Quindlen novel reader way There's something undeniable about the posture of a person trying not to acknowledge your existance Anna Quindlen posture acknowledge trying I have a cat, the pet that ranks just above a throw pillow in terms of required responsibility. Anna Quindlen cat responsibility pet I don't have to listen to the Gospel on Sunday to know the stories of the New Testament. They inform so much of what I write that they're practically like a news scrim that goes through my brain 24/7. Anna Quindlen sunday brain writing 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
