Anna Quindlen Quotes

Nothing outside of my child is important.

All I know is that once you have children, you put them before anything you're feeling or going through. Today, my daughter walked into the room and I said, 'I love you, baby,' and she said, 'Well, I don't like you,' and I said to my wife, 'The meaner she is to me, the more I love her.'

I've learned not to let it be the end of the world if a boy doesn't like you. I used to put so much effort into boys. I started playing guitar because I wanted to impress this boy. Then, I ended up in love with guitar and I didn't care about the boy anymore.

I gave myself to my children. It happens to some women.

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

You think you know what love is - until you have a child and discover that unconditional mother love.

No, we don't own our children. Our parental privilege is to love them, to lead them, and to let them go.

I can't love you unless I give you up.

If you want to love a parent you have to understand the incredible investment he or she has in you. If you are a parent, and you want to be loved, you have to deserve it.

To give them what I never had heals me. Some days I look at them and almost start to cry. I think, How can I love them more than I did the day before? But it keeps growing.

Everything I did with my life I did so that I could give my parents everything they didn't have because of me.

True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish; that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife.

I love my children unconditionally.

I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't.

You try as a parent. You love beyond reason. You fight beyond endurance. You hope beyond despair. You never think, until the very last moment, that it still might not be enough.

If some glorious angel suddenly descended through my living room ceiling and offered to take away the children I have and give me other, better children — more polite, funnier, nicer, smarter — I would cling to the children I have and pray away that atrocious spectacle.

LOVE is to stop making demands on people and give them room to grow.

The last step in parental love involves the release of the beloved; the willing cutting of the cord that would otherwise keep the child in a state of emotional dependence.

. . . I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you.

On occasion I have observed parents shopping to clothe a son about to enter missionary service. The new suits are fitted, the new shoes are laced, and shirts, socks, and ties are bought in quantity. I met one father who said to me, 'Brother Monson, I want you to meet my son.' Pride popped his buttons; the cost of the clothing emptied his wallet; love filled his heart. Tears filled my eyes when I noticed that his [the father's] suit was old, his shoes well worn; but he felt no deprivation. The glow on his face was a memory to cherish.

Part of the thrill of guiding children into adulthood is the release. But it's also a parent's greatest act of surrender. Still, you have to let them go. Start now.

Love never claims, it ever gives.

What is a child, but a piece of the parent enrapt up in another skin? And yet our dearest children are but as strangers to us, in comparison of the unspeakable dearness that was between the Father and Christ. Now, that he should ever be content to part with a Son, and such an only One, is such a manifestation of love, as will be admired to all eternity.

Love is one of the few experiences in life that we can best keep by giving it away.

Nobody's strong enough to be a parent. We just do it, blindly, going forward on faith and love and hope. That's all it is...Being afraid...and going on.