The Quindlen family reads Dickens's classic aloud every Christmas Eve, and Quindlen notes it as an influence on her own work.
Anna Quindlen claims to have read "Pride and Prejudice" many times, and says, "The restraint and the irony...are a kind of professional guidepost for me." ("Book" interview, October 1998)
In a "Book" interview (October 1998), Quindlen claims, "The virtuosity [in "The Sound and the Fury"] makes me consider challenging myself in new ways as a writer....It's like eating a good meal..."
In her book, "How Reading Changed My Life", Quindlen cites "A Wrinkle in Time" as one of her favorite children's books. Quindlen has written several children's books as well as novels.
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"I sometimes joke that my greatest shortcoming as a writer is that I had an extremely happy childhood."
"I would like a reader to finish 'Black and Blue'...and feel that she had both recognized herself within its pages, and learned about selves that she had never known existed."
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The oldest of five children, Anna Quindlen grew up in an Irish-Italian family outside Philadelphia. She attended Barnard College, and in 1974 began her career as a reporter. Her column in the New York Times was enormously successful, and in 1992 she won a Pulitzer Prize for her newspaper work. In 1995, she quit her job at the Times to write fiction full time.
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1951 New Jersey, Middle Atlantic States, Northeastern States, United States,
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I am in the middle of reading this book, and I have to say I love it. One feels, while reading it, as if they are standing right next to the character and feeling what they're feeling. Betty Smith is a wonderful author, who weaves a captivating story full of the struggles, glories, and every-day life experiences of a young girl growing up in the Brooklyn slums. I'd give it 5 stars, any day.