“Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“Maybe crazy is just the word we use for feelings that will not be contained.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“There's something undeniable about the posture of a person trying not to acknowledge your existance”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“It's only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“In the aftermath of death Small talk feels too small, big talk too enormous.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“We've made hyper motherhood a measure of female success.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“there is still a kind of unique loneliness to child rearing for women. We so often do it in isolation. Add to the fact that in our competitive, perfectionist culture, in which the price woman are required to pay for freedom still seems to be martyrdom, almost everyone lies about motherhood. Part of that lying is loyalty - I can't let on that my kid is the only one on the playground who can't read or play the piano - and part of it is self-protection, since we've made hyper-motherhood a measure of female success. The preferred answer to the question "How are you?" is always "Fine," and the answer to the question "How are the kids?" is supposed to be "Great!" That's true even if the accurate answers would be "terrible" and "a mess." I think it produces its own kind of desperation, especially for women, who yearn to be emotionally open.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“A loose end - that's what we woman call it, when we are overwhelmed by the care of small children, the weight of small tasks, a life in which we fall into bed at the end of the day exhausted from being all things to all people.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“How many times in the past three months have I been reminded of Ruby's two selves, the careful courteous young woman who spoke so sweetly to strangers and the person she let loose at home, where she was safe, where she could be spiky and harsh and uncertain and at sea? I have two selves now, too, the one that goes out in the world and says what sound like the right things and nods and listens and sometimes even smiles, and the real woman, who watches her in wonder, who is nothing but a wound, a wound that will not stop throbbing except when it is anesthetized. I know what the world wants: It wants me to heal. But to heal I would have to forget, and if I forget my family truly dies.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“Out lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“She say guilt is a useless emotion."
"Oh, please," says Nancy. "Guilt is what separates humans from animals.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“She is not what I envied in high school, the popular girl. She is something I'm not even sure existed then, the sure-footed girl. She gives the impression of being completely herself, and only a part of that impression is false.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“it is the only time I can rest without sleeping, think without deciding, speak and hear my own voice. It is the only time I can be alone. Slightly less than an hour each weekday when no one makes demands.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“My friendships have a certain symmetry at the moment: Alice is always asking me what she should do, and Nancy is always telling me what I should do.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“This is what it is like to be married: conversations in which no one actually speaks.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell,”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“Here is what I know about dressing like your teenage daughter: She will always look better than you”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“I Remember how we put in a security system to keep intruders out of the house, and how we only used it when we went on vacations. It didn't matter: OUr intruder had a place at our table, kew where we hid the Easter eggs and where we'd buried the pet guinea pigs, was so familiar that when I saw him in the bedroom doorway that last time I thought he was my own son, come to kill me.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“So much of friendship is about being in the right place at the right time.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
Anna Quindlen
Born place: in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The United States
Born date July 8, 1952
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“Closing his eyes again, Beck repositions his head on the back of his seat, and in one sure movement, reaches over and grabs my hand. Even with his eyes closed, he knew where to find me. I want to cry for a thousand reasons, laugh for a thousand others; this is my anomalous balance, the place where Beck and I can let the ridiculousness of our collective sentences marinate, and other things, too. It’s a singular moment of clarity between two people, and rare or not, I’m not about to let go.
I’m done roaming hillsides.
I’ve scoured the corners of the earth.
And I’ve found my people.
God, I’m almost jealous of myself.
Holding Beck’s hand in my lap, I find a courage I never knew I had and drop my head on his shoulder.”
― David Arnold, quote from Mosquitoland
“Recent studies and discoveries increasingly point out that we heal primarily in and through the body, not just through the rational brain. We can all create more room, and more opportunities for growth, in our nervous systems. But we do this primarily through what our bodies experience and do—not through what we think or realize or cognitively figure out.”
― Resmaa Menakem, quote from My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Mending of Our Bodies and Hearts
“Mrs Hendred was a very pretty woman of great good-nature and much less than commonsense.”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Venetia
“to console the girl for the loss of her feathered friend.”
― L. Frank Baum, quote from Ozma of Oz
“She stood looking carefully at the labeled portraits Ursala had put up: Little Crow, Chief of the Santees, Geronimo, last of the Apaches, and Ursala's favorite, Big Foot, dying in the snow at Wounded Knee.
"Isn't that where the massacre was?" asked Ellen.
"Yes. I'm going to go there when I'm grown up. To Wounded Knee."
"That seems sensible," said Ellen.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from A Song for Summer
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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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