Ever since I moved to Manhattan in the mid-1980’s I have loved reading anything by American writer Anna Quindlen. She’s smart, intuitive, wise and has a way of expressing herself that makes me feel like she’s speaking directly to me. No wonder she won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her Public and Private column in the New York Times in 1992. I can’t wait to read her latest novel, “Still Life With Bread Crumbs”. Below are a few, and really just a few, of my favourite Quindlen quotes.
“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.”
“Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They’re its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.”
“A finished person is a boring person.”
“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”
“Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over the dunes, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over a pond and a stand of pines. Get a life in which you pay attention to the baby as she scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.”
“Turn of your cell phone. Turn off your regular phone, for that matter. Keep still. Be present.”
