Thinking Out Loud

Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anna Quindlen comes “a splendid collection” of short essays that are “eloquent, powerful, compassionate, and droll” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer) “Quindlen writes with rare insight, intelligence, and wit. Most of all she writes from the heart.”—The Buffalo News Thinking out loud is what Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen does best in this collection of her hugely popular New York Times columns. With her finger on the pulse of modern life, and her heart in a place we all recognize, she writes about the passions, politics, and peculiarities of Americans everywhere: “Some people go nuts when their children learn to pick out the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ on the piano. The day I realized my eldest child could read was one of the happiest days of my life.” “Discussions about the homeless always remind me of a woman who told me that she was damned if her tax dollars were going to pay for birth control for the poor. The question is not whether we will pay. It is what we want to pay for, and what works.” On subjects close to home and far away, Anna Quindlen remains a uniquely clear and incisive voice.