Anna Quindlen Quotes

I wrote the book because I wanted to be able to share some things that I had learned and as pompous as that may sound, as you get to a certain point in life, you figure so what am I doing?

I think I can see more clearly now - about how the pattern of past experiences has shaped who I am and the characters I have played - and I'm grateful for that.

I think that between 27 and 37 was a really big learning decade.

You make your own kinds of mistakes, and I’m sure you’ll have your share of regrets in life. But commitment was never your problem, sweetie. You have a better chance of making this work than most forty-year-olds I know. My little middle-aged child. Luckily, you seem to have found another old soul.

The fact is that this conversation is going on at every level at every age, we're all going, "God, what a jerk I've been," "How could I have married that guy?" or "How could I have done this or that?" With time, this is the gift of being older, that you get to look back and say, "It wasn't all about them."

I've tested life and I've learned what works for me.

I've been through a lot. I've thought a lot about life, and I've spent a lot of time studying history and science.

A man doesn't have to have all the answers; children will teach him how to parent them, and in the process will teach him everything he needs to know about life.

I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.

Beyond just writing about falling in love and out of love and wanting to do certain things and going out and partying and all the things that I grew up writing about, I want to write about deeper things.

Pippin chooses love and finds a greater sense of himself at the end of all the madness. I relate to him in many ways. I have been through stuff, thought I knew best, and often been proven wrong.

It gets easier as you get older because life deals its particular hand, and our experiences get deeper, richer, more profound. When I gave birth to my son, something happened. It is a huge thing for a woman: a whole set of emotions you never had before arrives, and a love you never had before in your life is now on tap.

I've done a lot of growing up since the age of 16 and I really wanted that to be reflected in my music.

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

This taught me a lesson, but I'm not quite sure what it is.

I don't want to put a pause on the rest of my life; I'm really enjoying getting older and the wisdom that comes from that.

I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.

Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.

I've been in many relationships in my life and learned a lot from them, good and bad.

I felt that with 'In A Perfect World' I was still kind of finding myself - not just as a musician, but also in love and in life.

I lived a very isolated life. When you start at 20, you have a lot of nonsense to work out of your system.

When I did 'Tokyo Drift,' a lot of the philosophy that Han lived by I have actually gone through in my own life. As I got older, I realized that I really believe in those philosophies, like the importance of family.

There is nothing I've been through in my life that I regret, or that I would go back and change. I feel like everything that happened - personally and professionally - I went through for a reason, and I learned from those things.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.