Anna Quindlen Quotes

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

My father was a doctor, but he was what I would call an intellectual - very well-read and very interested in knowledge. He insisted that I get as much education as my brothers.

The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things.

Ordinary people have big TVs. Extraordinary people have big libraries.

We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.

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

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.

A personal library is a reflection of who you are and who you want to be, of what you value and what you desire, of how much you know and how much more you'd like to know.

You don't read in your own field. You read in that field when you're young, so that you can learn.

I feel like if you read something, and it makes you so curious about a topic that you then go read something else, that's exciting.

One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.

Read as much as you can, and then sit down and write.

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.

Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred temple, books might safely reside.

I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them.

One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.

I like to read, especially nonfiction. I love learning, so I study languages, cook, learn basic HTML, and enjoy other activities that stimulate communication and the dark recesses of my musician's brain.

School is something that you learn - reading and writing. Education is what you learn from the family, from the environment, from the community.

I was on my own at Wellesley, surrounded by a lot of young women who were motivated and intellectually curious. I started to read because I was required to do so for class, but I soon found myself enjoying the seclusion of the library. I came to see reading as an important way to learn about people, including myself.

I do like having books on my shelves. I do value that life.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

My parents lived a modest life, and their main concern was the education of their children. My father was a self-taught man but had a great intellectual curiosity, not only for biblical and talmudic texts, but also for philosophy, psychoanalysis and history.

We should teach kids how to question. Now having said that, of course, to be a productive adult, there are certain skills that are required - reading, writing, and, in the old-fashioned days, we used to say arithmetic. Now we say mathematics.

Throughout my career as a lawyer, teacher and labor leader, books have remained my constant companion - stuffed into a briefcase, overflowing on my bedside table, stacked on my desk at work. Books have carried me to distant worlds, opened new doors and made me feel empathy, compassion, anger, fear, joy, acceptance - and everything in between.