Curtis Sittenfeld Quotes

I gave people the benefit of the doubt, thinking, so many people that appear very calm and even boring must have all these wild emotions and crazy ideas.

I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women.

Of course, I didn't imagine then that I could have had a real relationship with any guy. I thought that by virtue of being me I was disqualified.

But I never thought of who he wasn't, I never had to explain or defend him to myself, I didn't even care what we talked about.

I guess in life I find people who, at first glance, appear to be very typical or average, whatever that means, and then turn out to have hidden qualities.

I actually liked the disolation of winter; it was the season when it was okay to be unhappy. If I were to ever kill myself, I thought it would be in the summer.

There's a lot that's not explained about the universe. And psychic-ness is not stranger than that.

To remain alone did not seem to me a terrible fate, no worse than being falsely joined to another person.

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.

I don't think that I would ever, while writing, think to myself, "I need a little more psychological realism."

I just like to inhabit a character really deeply.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

... nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.

If I'm at somebody's house and they have magazines on the table and people are chatting, I feel almost a physical urge to start reading the magazines instead of talking to people.

Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

And I am pretty sure that's the point of reading fiction -- so someone else can say in a way you never would have something you recognize immediately.

In some ways I think it would be very dignified if I went away for twenty years and then wrote my fourth book.

I think there is still pressure to marry. I think there is still pressure to have children. If you're middle or upper class, those pressures exist at a later age now.

How quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound.

you know what her punishment is for tormenting you way back when?" he said.I looked at him.He said, "her punishment is being her,

Children are nothing but a problem people create and then congratulate themselves on solving.

And the reason I'm telling you all this is that I want you to know no one in my life has ever made me feel worse about myself than you.

We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.

Mama!' Rosie tugged on my shirt. 'This broccoli is tasty and wonderful'.

You never know the nature of another couple's marriage, do you?

All things being equal, why not be married to a rich man? (Somewhere, Hannah thinks, there must be a needlepoint pillow asking this very question in a cleverer way.)