Anna Quindlen Quotes

A child, thought Carl, is not the only result of childbirth. A mother, too, is born. You see them every day--nondescript women with a bulge just above the groin, slightly double-chinned. Perpetually forty. Someone's mother, you think. There is a child somewhere who has made this woman into a mother, and for the sake of the child she has altered her appearance to better play the part.

I do think that the birth of my daughter was sort of a rebirth for me. It made me look at life in a completely new way. And that made me appreciate life in a way I don't think I ever had before.

Given the loss of a child or the birth of a child or anything like that, I think it's just I'm more moved by life, the older I get, so it's easier to connect to the characters that I play.

Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul. But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today; I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here.

I couldn't have been a novelist without being a mother. It gives you a unique witness point of the growth of a personality. It was a kind of biological component for me that had to come first. My children gave this other window on the world.

I never again want to see the face of a starving child or hear the weeping of a mother who has lost her son to war. Peace, this is what my husband gave his life for, and I want the world to know that he did not die in vain. Peace, this is what will make me very happy.

I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.

The amazing thing about becoming a parent is that you will never again be your own first priority. The gift of motherhood is the selflessness that it introduces you to, and I think that's really freeing... I think it allows you to put yourself in other people's shoes...the empathy that it slugs you with, being a mother. And I think it makes you a better storyteller.

My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.

I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obsessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is.

I believe when your children are born that you are reborn in some fashion.

I find being a mother harder than I though it was going to be. That is a tremendous revelation for me personally. Much more time, more care, more attention and more effort needs to be spent on care for the children. That will save the world at large.

Being a mother is probably the hardest job in the world. I feel like, in a lot of ways, children come into the world to teach us.

A mother has, perhaps, the hardest earthly lot; and yet no mother worthy of the name ever gave herself thoroughly for her child who did not feel that, after all, she reaped what she had sown.

I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and I would question people who wrote novels and try to find out how they did it and how they had got past page 30. Then, with the approach of old age, I began to just think: “Well, lucky I can do anything at all.

The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.

Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life's duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.

many tender, delicate mothers, seem to think that to make their children eat, is all that is requisite to make them great.

I thought how tenuous the links were between mother and children between friends family things you think are eternal. Everything could be lost more easily than anyone could imagine.

She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child's perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here--the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.

Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.

One reason we have children I think is to learn that parts of ourselves we had given up for dead are merely dormant and that the old joys can re emerge fresh and new and in a completely different form.

I feel very fortunate to be currently in the position where I can choose to be an actor, writer, director, or all of them at the same time. With being a mom, I've recently had a priority shift that has sort of thrusted itself on my existence, but I tend to use all experiences as something to work with. Anything that is profoundly, energy shifting - like having a child - is fodder for creative thought.

The childhood scenes [ in The Tree of Life] are tremendous. My favorite moment is when the mother levitate - for three seconds. Of course, this is how a child thinks of his mother.

I think that becoming a parent absolutely changes your entire life and certainly changes your work, and it has changed mine. It just allows you to have access to your emotions, even more than you already did. You're watching this little person grow in front of you, and you realize that you're seeing how precious life is and how quickly it goes. You get to things faster, even emotionally. I'm not as timid about reaching into some areas in myself and bringing that to my work.