Anna Quindlen

“If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”

“Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not necessarily in that order.”

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

“All of us want to be better than we are. And we are all better than we think we are.”

“Honesty is not the best policy. It is the only policy.”

“You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.”

“Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield.”

“Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning.”

“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.”

“Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.”

“Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion.”

“After a while, if you're a writer, you want to get beyond the story and learn more about the characters.”

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”

“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.”

“Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to civil rights. Before the big movements began, there were small movements that started with a few people who refused to be silent.”

“The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.”

“Being a parent is not transactional. We do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor.”

“Think of life as a terminal illness, because that's what it is.”

“We are all more than the worst thing we have ever done.”