Quotes

Even without wars, life is dangerous.

I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep nightmares out.

I was a victim of the American Dream, the bourgeois, middle-class dream. All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language, though, so I am always aware of every word's meaning, or multiple meanings.

I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate more with my family. I do, however, believe that without order or pattern poetry is useless.

Looking back at it now, any objective account of my life is bound to read like a cross between 'The Wife of Bath's Tale' and a travel brochure.

I need a teacher quite as much as Helen. I know the education of this child will be the distinguishing event of my life, if I have the brains and perseverance to accomplish it.

I think the must-have power qualities for a female or male power leader are really the ability to focus, to work hard, to be extremely goal oriented and to not let the noise and the nonsense interfere with your mission - what you really feel you want to do with your career and your life.

My very first products were hand-made, one-of-a-kind pins. When I finally realized I could repeat a phrase to make multiples, 'intellectuals gone bad,' a fairly succinct description of my own life, seemed appropriate.

It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.

In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them.

I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.

None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.

I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?

I realize that humor isn't for everyone. It's only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.

Life is a process. We are a process. The universe is a process.

Our culture has valued closed systems and tries to generate them in all walks of life. Women are better at and more comfortable with open systems, which occur naturally in nature.

We don't have enough data about how lifestyle decisions impact our health.

It's crazy to me that in this world of electronic medical records Walmart has so much information about how we shop, but no one has that information about our health. Why can't my doctor say, 'Wow, Anne, based on your lifestyle and behavior, you're five years from being diabetic.' But I can go to Target, and they know exactly what I'm going to buy.

Everyone's going to die, and everyone's going to get sick at some point. But I do believe that there are choices you can make in life that will make you as healthy as possible.

Health is not sort of like a 6-month project. Health is a lifetime accumulation of behaviors.

I think life is pretty awesome.

I think we're just scratching the surface. One of the most exciting aspects of 23andMe is that we're enabling you to watch a revolution unfold live during your lifetime, and I think that the decoding of the genome, in my opinion, is the most fascinating discovery of our lifetime, and you get to be part of it.

You may not know your complete family history, but the reality is everyone has something, and as you get older, you start to worry about these things more. Health is not sort of like a 6-month project. Health is a lifetime accumulation of behaviors.