Anna Quindlen

Columnist Anna Quindlen quit her back-page column in Newsweek to make way for younger, browner talent, but she went out scolding:

"It’s undeniable: America’s opinionator's are too white and too gray. They do not reflect our diversity of ethnicity and race, gender and generation. They do not reflect the diversity of opinion, either, mainly because most are part of an echo chamber of received wisdom that takes place at restaurant tables in New York and Washington. Conservative pundits are making themselves foolish, flailing wildly because their movement itself is aging, confounded by the popularity of a president who stands for much of what they revile. But liberals are little better, fighting the same old battles in the same old ways, as though the world during their tenure had not changed radically."

It wasn't until she turned 50 that Anna Quindlen realized she didn't care any longer what people thought about her. "After all those years as a woman hearing, 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning & thought, I'm enough."

Quindlen's new memoir, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, explores her past, present and future — her relationships with her parents and children, her faith, her career and her feelings about herself over the past five decades.