Raising a child is a little like Picasso's work; in the beginning he did very conventional representational things. Cubism came after he had the rules down pat.
Anna QuindlenWhen you really want to say no, say no. You can't do everything - or at least not well.
Anna QuindlenYou can get rid of the column. It's a little like staying at a hotel; you get used to the shape of the room, and then you're gone. With a novel you move into town and stay for a long time. That's both comforting and terrifying.
Anna Quindlen... It was the idea of facing a future skimming the surface of life, winging my way in and out of other people's crises, confusions, and passages, engaging them enough to get the story, but never enough to be indelibly touched by what I had seen or heard.
Anna QuindlenThe world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and tortuous.
Anna QuindlenHaving children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too--unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child's trouble.
Anna Quindlen