Anna Quindlen Quotes

“A life of unremitting caution, without the carefree - or even, occasionally, the careless - may turn out to be half a life.”

“Being a parent is not transaction ... we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavour: 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.”

“Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That's what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first.”

“I think when people keep saying to you, "You're good at this," you just keep doing it.”

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

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

“Speech is the voice of the heart.”

“The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed.”

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

“The truth about your own life is not always easy to accept, and sometimes hasn't even occurred to you.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Today is the only guarantee you get.”

“You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life... Your entire life... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.”

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

“Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning.”

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

“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”

“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.”

“One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.”

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