The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.
¶ (Attributed)
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Anna Quindlen (b. 1953) American journalist, novelist
Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.
¶ How Reading Changed My Life (1998)
If you can bring to your children the self that you truly are, as opposed to some amalgam of manners and mannerisms, expectations and fears that you have acquired as a carapace along the way, you will give them, too, a great gift. You will teach them by example not to be terrorized by the narrow and parsimonious expectations of the world, a world that often likes to color within the lines when a spray of paint, a scrawl of crayon, is what is truly wanted.
¶ Commencement Speech at Mount Holyoke College (23 May 1999)
Full text.
I am happy. I am successful on my own terms. Because 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.
¶ Commencement Speech at Mount Holyoke College (23 May 1999)
Full text.
When young writers write to me about following in the footsteps of those of us who string together nouns and verbs for a living, I tell them this: every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had. And that is herself, her own personality, her own voice. If she is doing Faulkner imitations, she can stay home. If she is giving readers what she thinks they want instead of what she is, she should stop typing. But if her books reflect her character, who she really is, then she is giving them a new and wonderful gift. Giving it to herself, too.
¶ Commencement Speech, Mount Holyoke College (23 May 1999)
Full text.
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WIST is my collection of quotations I find meaningful, moving, amusing (intended or not), well-phrased, and/or to which I just say I "Wish I'd Said That." But just because I quote it here doesn't mean I actually agree with it. If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to
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