Latest Anna Quindlen Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Novels are usually built on conflict, sometimes very, very difficult conflict. It's why men write war novels - because there you go, there's the conflict writ large.

  Anna Quindlen

  War, Writing, Men

• I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write, and there are very few of them.

  Anna Quindlen

  Book, Writing, Thinking

• I'm very optimistic. I think if you would describe me, my pretty consistent affect is that I'm a pretty happy person.

  Anna Quindlen

  Optimistic, Thinking, Describe Me

• I do tend to be almost kind of Pollyanna-ish person.

  Anna Quindlen

  Kind, Pollyanna, Persons

• I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

  Anna Quindlen

  Book, Thinking, Climbing

• In the same way the Brits had to get used to the idea that the sun had set on the British Empire, I think that there's the subrosa feeling that we are at the end of the American century, and I think that's very, very hard for Americans to take.

  Anna Quindlen

  Thinking, Ideas, Feelings

• I think Americans suspect, without even being able to articulate it, that we're at the end of the American century; that we're at the end of the 100 or 125 or 150 years when we were the undisputed arbiter and leader of the world.

  Anna Quindlen

  Thinking, Years, Leader

• I love having a president who I think is smarter than I am.

  Anna Quindlen

  Thinking, President, Smarter

• That's really what I want in a leader; I want somebody who's really, really smart.

  Anna Quindlen

  Smart, Leader, Want

• Obama doesn't seem like a burger and a beer kind of guy. I have to say, I don't find that problematic at all.

  Anna Quindlen

  Beer, Guy, Burgers

• Americans like warm characters. It's why, no matter what he did in the early days, they kind of resonated to Bill Clinton because he seems like a guy that you could sit down and have a burger and a beer with. It's even why, despite the fact that he sometimes seemed to be not firing on all cylinders, lots of them still like George W. Bush - because he seemed like the kind of guy you could have a burger and a beer with.

  Anna Quindlen

  Character, Beer, Guy

• I think we now know the limits also of intelligence and rhetoric.

  Anna Quindlen

  Thinking, Limits, Rhetoric

• Barack Obama presents as kind of a cool character, and I think that that's his natural personality.

  Anna Quindlen

  Character, Thinking, Personality

• Barack Obama is the kind of guy who likes to do things by inches, he's the kind of guy who likes to build consensus and compromise.

  Anna Quindlen

  Guy, Likes, Compromise

• While liberals had embraced Obama as someone who had left-wing progressive ideas, the truth is that by personality he's a very incremental guy.

  Anna Quindlen

  Wings, Ideas, Personality

• The New Testament has had a really powerful effect on how I write and how I live my life.

  Anna Quindlen

  Powerful, Writing, Living My Life

• We're tortured, a lot of us, believe me.

  Anna Quindlen

  Believe, Believe In Me

• I think at every moment in the last probably 100 years, when the institutional church had the opportunity to do the right thing, they did the wrong thing. They're a dying institution in many parts of the world because they refuse to ordain women or married people. And now they're a dying institution because some of their members did enormous harm to young people and instead of responding aggressively with humility, and with love, and with the confession of wrongdoing, they tried to spin it as though they were a political party, and that's just deplorable.

  Anna Quindlen

  Party, Humility, Opportunity

• I'm a Catholic of the New Testament, I'm not a Catholic of the hierarchy.

  Anna Quindlen

  Catholic, Hierarchy, New Testament

• I really feel like I'm a liberal because I'm a Catholic, because I took the words of the New Testament to heart.

  Anna Quindlen

  Heart, Catholic, New Testament

• The Church does an enormous amount of good, and it carries one of the most valuable messages imaginable - that you should love your neighbor as yourself, and that if you have two coats you should give one to the man who has none.

  Anna Quindlen

  Love You, Men, Two

• On social welfare the Church does so much good around the world - nuns running schools and homeless shelters, priests ministering to people who are in crisis.

  Anna Quindlen

  Running, School, People

• I do think there's some aspect of being a novelist that is a little crazy making.

  Anna Quindlen

  Crazy, Thinking, Novelists

• What usually happens is that when I'm nearing the end of one novel a vague idea about what I want to do next begins to present itself to me in terms of theme. And I would say over about the next six to eight months, usually as I'm out power walking in the morning, or when I'm cooking at night, or when I'm driving in the car, the people who might embody those themes take on a sharper and sharper focus. And there comes this sort of critical mass moment when they actually start to do things in my head.

  Anna Quindlen

  Morning, Night, Ideas

• I do a lot of mental work before I ever start writing.

  Anna Quindlen

  Writing