Anna Quindlen - Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake (2012)

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You're like a cake when you're young. You can't rush it or it will fall, or just turn out wrong. Rising takes patience, and heat.

Anna Quindlen
That's what makes life so hard for women, that instead of thinking that this is the way things are, we always think it's the way we are.

Anna Quindlen
As my one son says, about being a feminist boy, 'Chicks dig it.' And that's been his guiding principle.

Anna Quindlen
Plastic is magical, as though the bill will never come due.

Anna Quindlen
Being a parent is not transaction... we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: we are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us.

Anna Quindlen
A safety net of small white lies can be the bedrock of a successful marriage. You wouldn't believe how cheaply I can do a kitchen renovation.

Anna Quindlen
It often seems, looking back, that the unexpected comes to define us, the paths we didn't see coming and may have wandered down by mistake. The older we get the more willing we are to follow those, to surprise ourselves.

Anna Quindlen
Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games. In my religion, martyrs die.

Anna Quindlen
Real friends offer both hard truths and soft landings and realize that it's sometimes more important to be nice than to be honest.

Anna Quindlen
I had that feeling you have when you're watching a sad movie, sobbing at the heartbreak you are feeling at the same time that you know the heartbreak isn't exactly real, that it will be gone by the time you get home and make a cup of tea. I found a lot of life like that when I was younger, as though I was practicing for what came later.

Anna Quindlen
What we call things matters.... The words we use, and how we perceive those words, reflect how we value, or devalue, people, places, and things.

Anna Quindlen
Women were once permitted a mourning period for their youthful faces; it was called middle age. Now we don't even have that. Instead we have the science of embalming disguised as grooming.

Anna Quindlen