Anna Quindlen Quotes

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.

Fortunately, I grew up in a traditional family where questioning was encouraged, particularly by my pandit grandfather. We are all voracious readers, seeking knowledge. I learn a lot from discussions with my wife, siblings and parents.

My mom was really vigorous about making sure that we saw things and that we questioned things. Education was so important to both of my parents.

I came from a home where everybody had a book.

Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as 'the intelligent layperson' does exist - in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw's plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

I grew up in a household that really encouraged reading and writing. My mother loves philosophy and is constantly reading philosophy and talking to me about different philosophers and different ways of life.

I'm a good learner. I am fond of reading and educating myself all the time.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.

Education helps you to be a well-rounded person, period. It teaches you how to take in information and data, process it, and use it for life building. Education was key in my family. You were going to college.

My father, Emil Palade, was professor of philosophy, and my mother, Constanta Cantemir-Palade, was a teacher. The family environment explains why I acquired early in life great respect for books, scholars and education.

If we want our children to value education, then we must show our appreciation for knowledge.

Education was the most important value in our home when I was growing up. People don't always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.

If my idea was just to maintain a certain lifestyle, there would be no need to get a Ph.D. But I do care very deeply about the idea side as well.

I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods.

The learned man knows that he is ignorant.

My head was always in books.

I spend so much time with the brightest and most talented and well-rounded people. I've had the privilege of having long and very intellectual conversations with people, and sometimes I just sit there and listen. It's like a better version of a class. Even though I'm not sitting at a desk and in school, I'm still learning all the time.

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

The great threat to the young and pure in heart is not what they read but what they don't read.

I believe in the power of ideas, I believe in the power of books, but you have to give them time.

The thing that makes reading and writing suspect in the eyes of the market economy is that it's not corrupted.

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

I never even graduated college. I never finished learning, as it were, and I have a psychological need to be in a learning environment at all times.