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

The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and torturous.

—Anna Quindlen

Or what about the statue in California currently said to be crying bloody tears? Why worry about the alleged weeping of a plaster effigy when so many actual human beings have reason to cry?

—Anna Quindlen

O ye of little faith, who believe that somehow the birth of Christ is dependent upon acknowledgment in a circular from OfficeMax!

—Anna Quindlen

I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.

—Anna Quindlen

I think that anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy.

—Anna Quindlen

I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man.

—Alexander Hamilton

And I knew I would remember this night, in the same misty way I'd remembered all the good things, as a time when things were as perfect as they could be.

—Sarah Dessen in That Summer

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

—Quintilian

Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.

—Samuel McChord Crothers