Monday Quote – Anna Quindlen

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

author image from Goodreads

Anna Quindlen,    How Reading Changed My Life

Anna Quindlen has been much on my mind the past week. With the press tour for the release of her new book Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, she has been everywhere from television, to Twitter, to a video chat on Goodreads. I’ve followed her career from journalist, to essayist, to fiction writer, so I was thrilled to participate in the iVillage Twitter party and the video chat. (In the interest of full disclosure, I won a copy of her new book – randomly chosen from participants.)

I find her interesting and witty. She was as clever in 140 characters as she is in her books. I admire that she has made motherhood her priority above all things and found a way to not let that hamper her success. She seems the kind of person I could sit down with to have coffee and talk life.

Only once this week did I feel out of synch with her. When asked about the lack of a Fiction Pulitzer this year, she seemed unfazed. She admitted to not being very upset because, in her words, she couldn’t think of a truly outstanding candidate. I was taken aback and a little horrified that an author would diss her contemporaries so openly. I disagree with her strongly on this point and can point to at least three novels I believe are Pulitzer-worthy, but I get the feeling Quindlen simply speaks her mind. Since I respect that quality in a person, I’ll have to just agree to disagree about the Pulitzer.

So back to the quote…I chose this one because it doesn’t just address the “external” world created by writer, but about the internal changes books bring to both the readers and the authors. I have not read How Reading Changed My Life, but I have lived that sentiment.

 

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