Anna Quindlen Quotes

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

We are all living this dance and it is clearly fraught with making choices. Lots of my choices are bad and that's normal. None of us are attractive at all times. What is attractive to me is authenticity.

Fake Is that what you are if you choose to improve the basic not perfect you?

I never had time to dream about being anyone else.

I just have to be myself. I'm not perfect, and I'm going to make mistakes; I might say the wrong thing. I have to be responsible to my community, and I feel like I am, but then I have to not be so hard on myself.

Nobody's perfect, and to try to pretend you're perfect is an exhausting fool's errand.

I think I'm a pretty open book. We're all a work in progress, and I'm not ashamed to say that I don't have it all together - I don't really think anyone does.

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

I think when I was younger, I strived for perfection. And now I strive for my imperfections because I think they're more interesting.

I shouldn't be right for every role, because I'm not.

Don't try to be me. No one but me can be me. But you can be you. Look inside yourself and get to know who the real you is. And then be that person. The best version of you.

I am how I am. I cannot explain it well, but I don't feel the nicest person, on the football pitch or in life, I'm just myself.

What I tell people is be the best version of yourself in anything that you do. You don't have to live anybody else's story.

You can spend time self-identifying and figuring out what you are on that, but at some point, you just want to be who you are and not walk around telling people.

The only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself: That’s where home is.

If you are just yourself, that's when people start gravitating towards you because nobody else can be you except you. Be authentic, don't give up, and start today.

What I have learned in my life and work is that the more I am able to be myself, the more it enables other people to be themselves.

No one will ever be as good at being you as you. So start there. Perfect is boring.

I cannot say this too strongly: Do not compare yourselves to others. Be true to who you are, and continue to learn with all your might.

You've got to be oblivious to other people, the push and pull of other people's opinions, the way other people measure success. It's then that you realize you are 100 percent who you are and you have to use that who-you-are 100 percent in order to create great things.

The final aim is not to know, but to be.... You've got to know yourself so that you can at last be yourself. "Be yourself" is the last motto.

People are like, 'Be yourself, be yourself,' and I'm still trying to figure out who that is. I know I'm not perfect, but I know I have a lot of people that support me and love me, and I don't want to let anyone down, so I just try to be the best that I can be.

Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else's traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man's character is, the better it fits him.

The ego and the personality have to be dropped, then you will find individuality arising...a feeling of uniqueness. Yes, you are unique. Everybody else is also unique. In this world only unique people exist, so comparison is just stupid, because you alone are like yourself. There is nobody like you, so how to compare?

There are a lot of parts of who I am that no one in the public has ever known, but the older I've gotten, the more I've appreciated my own strange little self and come to terms with that.