Anna Quindlen Quotes

I think I do overshare, and I sometimes marvel that I do it. But it's sort of - in a way, it's my way of trying to understand myself.

I've always just talked to my family and my friends. I've never been a person that's gone through excessive therapy at all. Some people might say that I should.

I think I do overshare. It's my way of trying to understand myself.

I feel like sometimes we just need to speak more about what we're going through.

Mostly, I just write about feelings that people can relate to. Because, yeah, I don't know who I am, and this is not my sound forever... I'm a human, so hopefully, I will always develop.

As a therapist, I am a companion. I try to help people tune into their own wisdom.

Finding people in your life as sounding boards who can be neutral and clear is worth nurturing.

Isolation offered its own form of companionship

Friends enhance our ability to think and act.

Sorrow you can hold, however desolating, if nobody speaks to you. If they speak, you break down.

After all, without understanding yourself, what basis have you for right thinking?

If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.

All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act.

[...] every time he forces himself to think before acting, it's her voice in his head telling him to slow down. He wants to tell her, but she's always so busy in the medical jet—and you don't just go to somebody and say, "I'm a better person because you're in my head.

I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving.

A little bit of attention and kindness can totally change a whole life, and a lack of that can do the same.

I think when you're in love with someone, it reveals a lot about yourself. You either rise to your highest highs or you stoop to your lowest lows.

I'm often moved by the circumstances around some of my characters, but I don't think I've actually cried watching myself.

I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn't happen, I may lose a little of the sense of isolation and desolation which abides with me. My circumstances allowing of nothing but the ejaculation of one-syllabled reflections, a written monologue by that most interesting being, myself, may have its yet to be discovered consolations.

One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

I think writing for anybody helps you order your life. It helps you arrange your emotions and your thoughts and it helps to provide perspective.

I feel a strong wakeup call and need to build social connections.

I think that after a while you realize that your husband can't be all things to you and certainly you don't want the kids to be all things to you, because that would be a terrible weight for them; and that where you really find solace a lot of the time is with your girlfriends.

The only person I do worry about, that I want to be a good person for, I think is my responsibility, is my sister. I'm going to be cool for you, okay. I like, I need to, I like being by myself right now. I think it's good for me.