The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have.
Anna Quindlen (b. 1953) American journalist, novelist
(Attributed)
Quotations by:
Quindlen, Anna
Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.
Anna Quindlen (b. 1953) American journalist, novelist
How Reading Changed My Life (1998)
Sometimes change came all at once, with a sound like a fire taking hold of dry wood and paper, with a roar that rose around you so you couldn’t hear yourself think. And then, when the roar died down, even when the fires were damped, everything was different.
A friend and mourner recalled that, growing up, she believed cats and dogs were the same animal, but that cats were the females and dogs the males. This is entirely credible.
People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs.
Anna Quindlen (b. 1953) American journalist, novelist
Article (1991-04-07), “Mr. Smith Goes to Heaven,” New York Times
(Source)
Part of an obituary for her dog, Jason Oliver C. Smith. Reprinted in Thinking Out Loud (1993).
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. I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
Familiarity breeds content.
Anna Quindlen (b. 1953) American journalist, novelist
Article (1993-01-27), “Welcome to the Club,” New York Times
And what does this metastasizing testing, for every subject, at every level, at every time of the year, do to kids? It has to mean that students absorb the message that learning is a joyless succession of hoops through which they must jump, rather than a way of understanding and mastering the world. Every question has one right answer; the measure of a person is a number. Being insightful, or creative, or, heaven forfend, counterintuitive counts for nothing.
Anna Quindlen (b. 1953) American journalist, novelist
Article (2005-06-12), “Testing: One, Two, Three,” Newsweek
(Source)
I am happy. I am successful on my own terms. Because if your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
Anna Quindlen (b. 1953) American journalist, novelist
Speech (1999-05-23), Commencement, Mount Holyoke College
Full text.
When young writers write to me about following in the footsteps of those of us who string together nouns and verbs for a living, I tell them this: every story has already been told. Once you’ve read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had. And that is herself, her own personality, her own voice. If she is doing Faulkner imitations, she can stay home. If she is giving readers what she thinks they want instead of what she is, she should stop typing. But if her books reflect her character, who she really is, then she is giving them a new and wonderful gift. Giving it to herself, too.
Anna Quindlen (b. 1953) American journalist, novelist
Speech (1999-05-23), Commencement, Mount Holyoke College
Full text.
If you can bring to your children the self that you truly are, as opposed to some amalgam of manners and mannerisms, expectations and fears that you have acquired as a carapace along the way, you will give them, too, a great gift. You will teach them by example not to be terrorized by the narrow and parsimonious expectations of the world, a world that often likes to color within the lines when a spray of paint, a scrawl of crayon, is what is truly wanted.
Anna Quindlen (b. 1953) American journalist, novelist
Speech (1999-05-23), Commencement, Mount Holyoke CollegeFull text.