There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays.

Anna Quindlen

Categorized in : Believe Love Is Heart

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

Anna Quindlen

being-yourself confidence letting-go

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

Anna Quindlen

reading book travel

Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted.

Anna Quindlen

stars moon spring

New York is a city where it's particularly hard to be poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is part of its identity.

Anna Quindlen

cities identity new-york

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

Anna Quindlen

usa health men

I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.

Anna Quindlen

editors life children

Acts of bravery don't always take place on battlefields. They can take place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations, and yes, your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world.

Anna Quindlen

courage heart character

Reading is another thing that has made me more human by exposing me to worlds I might never have entered and people I might never meet.

Anna Quindlen

reading people world

being a parent is not transaction ... we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: we are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us.

Anna Quindlen

parent strong giving

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

middle literature life-is

Speech is the voice of the heart.

Anna Quindlen

speech voice heart

There's no greater happiness than doing something every day that you love, that you feel you do in a satisfactory fashion, and which both supports and gives you time to support your family. I felt so lucky to have all that.

Anna Quindlen

support fashion giving

I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that this is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.

Anna Quindlen

journey dresses life

The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them. No one does the right thing out of fear. If you ever utter the words, 'We've always done it that way,' I urge you to wash out your mouth with soap.

Anna Quindlen

voice done doe

If an opportunity scares you, that's God's way of saying you should jump at it.

Anna Quindlen

starting-over opportunity life

I've been a feminist since I was a teenager, but originally it was because I wanted to make the world a better place for me.

Anna Quindlen

teenager feminist world

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, 'I'm enough.'

Anna Quindlen

women smart morning

That's really what I want in a leader; I want somebody who's really, really smart.

Anna Quindlen

smart leader want

Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.

Anna Quindlen

regret children past

an the president bring out the voters who were so enthusiastic about him in 2008 and seem a little disenchanted now? Can he bring out young people? Can he bring out Latinos? Can he bring out those white suburban moms?

Anna Quindlen

mom white people