Anna Quindlen Quotes

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

Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off by myself with a book than do any of the dozens of things that children usually do to amuse themselves. I never aged out of it.

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

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.

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.

Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement.

The difference between government and leadership is that leadership has a soul.

Today is the only guarantee you get.

Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around.

So much of what you take for granted is the bedrock of happiness.

I was doing the family grocery shopping accompanied by two children, an event I hope to see included in the Olympics in the near future.

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

The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make my marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

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.

Speech is the voice of the heart.

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.

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

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.