Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules. -Anna Quindlen Parenting
The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male and the other female. -Anna Quindlen Marriage
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 Wedding
The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. -Anna Quindlen Amazing
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 Independence
But it's important, while we are supporting lessons in respecting others, to remember that many of our youngest kids need to learn to respect themselves. You learn your worth from the way you are treated. -Anna Quindlen Respect
The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools. -Anna Quindlen Future
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 Wisdom
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 Poetry
I realized that, while I would never be my mother nor have her life, the lesson she had left me was that it was possible to love and care for a man and still have at your core a strength so great that you never even needed to put it on display. -Anna Quindlen Strength
After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.' -Anna Quindlen Women
The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male and the other female. -Anna Quindlen Failure
Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them. -Anna Quindlen Trust
If I get the forty additional years statisticians say are likely coming to me, I could fit in at least one, maybe two new lifetimes. Sad that only one of those lifetimes can include being the mother of young children. -Anna Quindlen Sad
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 Change
I'm sure not afraid of success and I've learned not to be afraid of failure. The only thing I'm afraid of now is of being someone I don't like much. -Anna Quindlen Failure
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 Beauty
The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with. -Anna Quindlen Health
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 Women
Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers' incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong, who will protect us? If they are not imperfect, how can we equal them? -Anna Quindlen Strength
Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules. -Anna Quindlen Freedom
