Anna Quindlen

A finished person is a boring person.

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

Women are the glue that hold our day-to-day world together.

The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and torturous.

A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement.

But never fear, gentlemen; castration was really not the point of feminism, and we women are too busy eviscerating one another to take you on.

I came to the realization that there were certain public issues that were most usefully dealt with within some sort of framework of at least my private beliefs, if not my private life.

The truth about your own life is not always easy to accept, and sometimes hasn't even occurred to you.

I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.

When an actress takes off her clothes onscreen but a nursing mother is told to leave, what message do we send about the roles of women? In some ways we're as committed to the old madonna-whore dichotomy as ever. And the madonna stays home, feeding the baby behind the blinds, a vestige of those days when for a lady to venture out was a flagrant act of public exposure.

There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.

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.

I think that anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy.

O ye of little faith, who believe that somehow the birth of Christ is dependent upon acknowledgment in a circular from OfficeMax!

If God is watching us, as some believers suggest, as though we were a television show and God had a lot of free time, the deity would surely be bemused by how dumbed-down devotion has sometimes become in this so-called modern era. How might an omnipotent being with the long view of history respond to those who visit the traveling exhibit of a grilled-cheese sandwich, sold on eBay, that is said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary? It certainly argues against intelligent design, or at least intelligent design in humans.

Or what about the statue in California currently said to be crying bloody tears? Why worry about the alleged weeping of a plaster effigy when so many actual human beings have reason to cry?

Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That's what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first.

When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.

It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.

I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.

All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.

Think of life as a terminal illness, because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think interior decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

Voices that loud are always meant to bully. Do not be bullied. Acts of bravery don't always take place on battlefields. They can take place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations, and, yes your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world.

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.