I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. – Anna Quindlen
Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed. – Anna Quindlen
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
America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security. – Anna Quindlen
Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts. – Anna Quindlen
If God had meant Harvard professors to appear in People magazine, She wouldn’t have invented The New York Review of Books. – Anna Quindlen
There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever. – Anna Quindlen
In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat. – Anna Quindlen
New York City has finally hired women to pick up the garbage, which makes sense to me, since, as I’ve discovered, a good bit of being a woman consists of picking up garbage. – Anna Quindlen
People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can’t manage it. – Anna Quindlen
The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. – Anna Quindlen
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. – Anna Quindlen
Here is the real domino theory – gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby, they all fall down and someday it will come to you. – Anna Quindlen
Children should have enough freedom to be themselves – once they’ve learned the rules. – Anna Quindlen
There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat. – Anna Quindlen
If you want something, it will elude you. If you do not want something, you will get ten of it in the mail. – Anna Quindlen
There is something so settled and stodgy about turning a great romance into next of kin on an emergency room form, and something so soothing and special, too. – Anna Quindlen
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
Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number. – Anna Quindlen
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. – Anna Quindlen
All parents should be aware that when they mock or curse gay people, they may be mocking or cursing their own child. – Anna Quindlen
