When you look at the women that have made a real difference in the world throughout history, what they’ve done has almost always been defined by fearlessness. That’s something I came to at a certain point; I wish I’d come to it younger. Stop looking over your shoulder — there’s nobody who matters back there.
Anna QuindlenThere 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 QuindlenMy father really, really pushed me to excel in a way that I resented for years and then realized had really worked for me.
Anna QuindlenAthletes are American princes and the locker room is their castle. Some of them behave in princely fashion, become legitimate heroes to us all. And some are jerks.
Anna QuindlenAll of life like a series of tableaux, and in the living we missed so much, hid so much, left so much undone and unsaid.
Anna QuindlenPeople who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. Of all the words that have stuck to the ribs of my soul, poetry has been the most filling.
Anna Quindlen