Sittenfeld Quotes & Sayings

I wonder if they are the only three in the world: the man who is with you completely, the man who is with you but not with you, the man who will get as close to you as he can without ever becoming yours. — Curtis Sittenfeld

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

Liz and Willie were passing a miniature chateau
even in its modified version, it was seven or eight thousand square feet
and Liz said, "I guess I'm a Cincinnati opportunist. In New York, I play the wholesome-midwesterner card, but when I'm back here, I consider myself to be a chic outsider." Even before Willie replied, Liz felt the loneliness of having confided something true in a person who didn't care. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Here's what I've learned about the people in this city," Darcy was saying. "They grade their women on a curve. If someone is described as sophisticated, it means once during college she visited Paris, and if someone is described as beautiful, it means she's fifteen pounds overweight instead of forty. And — Curtis Sittenfeld

Does being forty feel fabulous and foxy? Liz asked. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I noticed then that the red-haired woman was buying the food you eat when you live alone: a box of cereal, a few apples, a plastic container of plain yogurt ... With an abrupt clarity, I saw how I had been launched into another category. I had been the red-haired woman; for a decade of my adult life, I had bought cereal and yogurt, I'd stood near couples and watched them nuzzle, and now I was part of such a couple. And I would not be launched back, I was certain. But I recognized her life, I knew it so well! I wanted to clasp her freckled hand, to say to her
surely we understood some shared code (or surely not, surely she'd have thought me preposterous)
It's good on the other side, but it's good on your side too. Enjoy it there. The loneliness is harder and the loneliness is the biggest part; but some things are easier. — Curtis Sittenfeld

She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions. — Curtis Sittenfeld

It would in retrospect appear to be a stop on a narrative path that was inevitable, but this is only because most events, most paths, feel inevitable in retrospect. — Curtis Sittenfeld

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. — Curtis Sittenfeld

There are people we treat wrong and later we're prepared to treat other people right. Perhaps this sounds mercenary, but I feel grateful for these trial relationships, and I would like to think it all evens out - surely, unknowingly, I have served as practice for other people. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Foolish names and foolish faces often appear in public places. — Curtis Sittenfeld

You don't need anyone else's approval or permission to enjoy the magic of writing. — Curtis Sittenfeld

You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Jane resembled nothing so much as a pregnant angel. She — Curtis Sittenfeld

I guess I consider myself at times to have intuition. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me. — Curtis Sittenfeld

If he didn't fully understand where I came from, he understood who I was now
he knew how well done I liked my steak, knew the color of my toothbrush, the expression I made when I realized I'd forgotten to roll up my car window before it rained. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I decided we should get married no more of this running-through-the-rain shit. We should live in the same place, sleep in the same bed at night, wake up together in the morning, and whenever there's a tornado, I can take care of you and watch Baseball at the same time. — Curtis Sittenfeld

When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs. — Curtis Sittenfeld

We both were smiling, and I loved him, I loved him completely, and I knew that he loved me back. I could feel it. That moment- inside it, I could anticipate the thing I most wanted and I could be beyond it, it had happened already, and I was ensconced in the rich reassurance of knowing it was certain and definite. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I like it when characters are some combination of appealing and maybe flawed or self-interested. I think in terms of scenes, and what I want a scene to achieve, and I think that the psychological realism arises from that. — Curtis Sittenfeld

She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it. — Curtis Sittenfeld

But then I think how I grew sick of kissing him. How can you spend your life with a person you're sick of kissing? — Curtis Sittenfeld

At such moments, I felt that we were like the people in California who live in enormous houses on the sides of cliffs, ghat our lives were beautiful but precarious, their foundations vulnerable. — Curtis Sittenfeld

get more stupider. — Curtis Sittenfeld

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

Sometimes it amazes me how much these defining parts of our lives hinge on chance. — Curtis Sittenfeld

As they sat, Kathy de Bourgh smiled and said, Now that we've both apologized within the first thirty seconds of our conversation about women and power, shall we begin? — Curtis Sittenfeld

Maybe my homesickness was a form of prescience because when I look back, it's the circumstances of this very car ride that I recognize as irretrievable: the experience of driving nowhere in particular with my sister, both of us seventeen years old, the open windows causing our hair to blow wildly; that feeling of being unencumbered; that confidence that our futures would inform the way we wanted them to and our real lives were just beginning. — Curtis Sittenfeld

If a man wants to be romantically involved with you, he tries to kiss you. That's the entire story, and if he doesn't kiss you, there is never a reason to wait around for him. — Curtis Sittenfeld

My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I just think that people are complicated, both men and women. It happens that I write more about women. — Curtis Sittenfeld

For months I heard whispers and though it had seemed that they were carried to me on the wind, they were really coming from inside my own head. — Curtis Sittenfeld

In my expectation that good fortune will lead inextricably to its reversal, I should note that I don't think I'm less deserving of happiness than anyone else; it is that in an unequal world, nobody deserves the privileges I enjoy. — Curtis Sittenfeld

At that time in my life, no conclusion was a bad conclusion. Something ended, and you stopped wishing and worrying. You could consider your mistakes, and you might be embarrassed by them, but the box was sealed, the door was shut, you were no longer immersed in the confusing middle. — Curtis Sittenfeld

If I moved back, I'm sure I'd find some great place to live. I wouldn't have to make a reservation to take a spin class or wait in line just to get into the grocery store. But then I'd look up one day and be like, 'What the fuck have I done?' — Curtis Sittenfeld

Nin - " Jasper said, and his pained tone was a reminder that, however he had transgressed, he hadn't done so entirely callously. His affection for her was not fake; it just was partial. Or perhaps it was fake, he was faking emotion now, and he had a personality disorder; but between these possibilities, she preferred to see him as inadequate rather than clinically diagnosable. "I'm going to do better," he said. "Starting now, I'm getting my act together. Don't give up on me." "Oh, Jasper," Liz said. "I already have. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I won't claim I've never in my life done anything I'm ashamed of, but I haven't done anything for a good while. If not everyone would agree with the decisions I've made, that's fine. What other people think has never made a situation right or wrong. — Curtis Sittenfeld

And this is how I know that it's all just words, words, words - that fundamentally, they make no difference ... Our relationship, for as long as things were good, and in that moment when they could have been good again, was about the irrelevance of words. You feel what you feel, you act as you act, who in the history of the world has ever been convinced by a well-reasoned argument? — Curtis Sittenfeld

People recognized you or they didn't, and it was unrelated to knowing you. Knowing you could just be your name or the street you lived on, your father's job. Recognizing you was understanding you had thoughts in your head, finding the same things funny or excruciating, remembering what you'd said months or even years after you'd said — Curtis Sittenfeld

She wasn't wrong, which wasn't the same as the idea being a wise one. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I seriously think he's one of those dudes where, his whole life, he's gotten credit for being smart and moral for no reason other than he's tall. Anyway, — Curtis Sittenfeld

In life we're most hell-bent on proving things that we're not really sure are true. — Curtis Sittenfeld

When I think of Henry and Oliver and Mike, I feel as if they are three different models - templates, almost - and I wonder if they are the only three in the world: the man who is with you completely, the man who is with you but not with you, the man who will get as close to you as he can without ever becoming yours. It would be arrogant to claim no other dynamics exist just because I haven't experienced them, but I have to say that I can't imagine what they are. I hope that I am wrong. — Curtis Sittenfeld

It was one thingfor a person who didn't really know me to act distant, but it was quite another for someone to get to know me and then back away. — Curtis Sittenfeld

There's no better investment than your cleavage." Charlotte smirked. "I believe they teach that in business school. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist. — Curtis Sittenfeld

... it never comes down to a single thing you did or didn't do or say. You might convince yourself it did, but it didn't. — Curtis Sittenfeld

The fact that I had no opinion on, for instance, relations between the U.S. And China did nit mean I didn't feel things. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I decided that I wanted to say to Sin-Jun, I like your skirt. But sometimes speaking is so hard! It's like standing still, then sprinting. I kept rehearsing the sentence in my head, examining it for flaws. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Among the women, a spontaneous cheer went up, which Liz was surprised to find herself joining, and this was when (she was on her fifth drink) she realized both that she was completely drunk
not just tipsy, not merely buzzed
and also that she was much happier than she'd been an hour or two before. She felt a retroactive remorse for all the Eligible contestants she'd deemed trashy and idiotic from the comfort of her living room; apparently, like teriyaki pizza and bee venom facials, getting wasted on a reality-TV show was not to be knocked until tried. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Then she was in a different part of the club, and she and Kitty were dancing to a rap song they both knew all the words to, and Kitty was wearing a thin plastic headband with antennae off of which wobbled life-sized sparkly pink penises. How marvelous this headband was! Even more marvelously, Kitty pointed out that Liz was wearing an identical one. Truly, it was a magical night. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I want to open myself up, I want to experience other dimensions, I don't want to be bound by the rules of this world. Does that make me a freak? — Curtis Sittenfeld

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. — Curtis Sittenfeld

What greater happiness is there than the privilege of being bored together? — Curtis Sittenfeld

I felt an old, visceral insecurity that manifested itself in an impulse to cover up our cribbage game, to literally shield the board with my hands. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I have always found it peculiar, to say the least, when conservatives, especially conservative men, make these particular issues their ideological focus; there is something suspect to me about individuals who devote enormous amounts of time and attention dos objects they profess to find repugnant — Curtis Sittenfeld

When you are the object of a person's affection, do you naturally credit him with a sympathetic heart and an understanding of the world? Perhaps your impression is right only insofar as it applies to you; in his presence, he is indeed possessed of these qualities for the very reason that you are the object of his affection. He is not observant so much as observant of you, not kind so much as kind toward you. — Curtis Sittenfeld

And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement. To spend a Saturday afternoon mopping your kitchen floor while listening to opera on the radio, and to go that night to an Indian restaurant with a friend and be home by nine o'clock - these are enough. They are gifts. — Curtis Sittenfeld

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

If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you. — Curtis Sittenfeld

We all make mistakes, don't we? But if you can't forgive yourself, you'll always be an exile in your own life. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I take it you don't believe in love at first sight." "Does anyone over the age of thirteen? Do you?" "I don't, no," Darcy said. "But I don't rule out for others what I haven't experienced firsthand. — Curtis Sittenfeld

There was a way in which my grandmother's true self was not these guests' business; no one's true self was the business of more than a very small number of family members or close friends. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I feel like a lot of life is distasteful and embarrassing. And you just push through it. You fix what you can, and you let time pass. — Curtis Sittenfeld

He's a lawyer in Atlanta, and he's very active in his church," Mrs. Bennet said. "If that's not the description of a man looking for a wife, I don't know what is. — Curtis Sittenfeld

This possibility was not flattering to me; it was terrifying. There were other things a guy could think I was, and he wouldn't be entirely wrong - nice, or loyal, or maybe interesting. Not that I was always any of those thing, but in certain situations, it was conceivable. But to be seen as pretty was to be fundamentally misunderstood. First of all, I wasn't pretty, and on top of that I didn't take care of myself like a pretty girl did; I wasn't even one of the unpretty girls who passes as pretty through effort and association. If a guy believed my value to lie in my looks, it meant either that he'd somehow been mislead and would eventually be disappointed, or that he had very low standards. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I think adults forget just how much faith teenagers can have in them, just how willing to believe that adults, by virtue of being adults, know absolute truths, or that absolute truths are even knowable. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Approaching each other, him from the gym, me from the library- this was when I walked down the aisle and he was waiting, this was when we made love, it was every anniversary, every reunion in an airport or train station, every reconciliation after a quarrel. This was the whole of our lives together. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I'd think, One of the times she leaves will be the last time I see her. It destroyed me. I didn't want us to have a last time, and that was how I realized I'd fallen in love with you. — Curtis Sittenfeld

The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen. — Curtis Sittenfeld

By the time we met up again, she'd be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single square of lasagna in a sealed Tupperware container as opposed to a squalid kitchen with tomato sauce splattered on the counters. And I wouldn't have to be there while she got it in order. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Rudolph Walsh, you are my fierce advocate, and your wit and wisdom — Curtis Sittenfeld

She might even have felt that self-congratulatory pride that heterosexual white people are known to experience due to proximate diversity. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Well
" My mother paused, and her tone was reflective in that way that is inevitably sad, because the past is sad. "What I remember," she said, "is that you were always such a dear little girl. — Curtis Sittenfeld

The tarps Ken Weinrich's crew used has yellow and royal blue stripes, not unlike those for a circus, and this had lent a festive yet undignified mood to the proceedings. — Curtis Sittenfeld

(as a single woman in my early thirties, I was careful not to coo excessively over other people's infants, lest it seem like I was telegraphing my desperation; the necessity of this precaution annoyed me, making me want to defiantly announce that I'd always liked babies, — Curtis Sittenfeld

But I was living my life sideway. I did not act on what I wanted, I did not say the things I thought, and being so stifled and clamped all the time left me exhausted; no matter what I was doing, I was always imagining something else. — Curtis Sittenfeld

If you're a parent in 2013, you have to get your hands on this book. Wise, engrossing, and so real that I fear Senior has been spying inside my house, All Joy is a must-read for those of us whose lives have been enriched and derailed by having kids. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Dena seemed about to respond, but instead, she belched again, a smaller belch that seemed unequal as a harbinger to the monstrous chunky gush that erupted from inside her. I held her hair back and looked away as she finished retching. Working with children had made me less squeamish
they were constantly presenting their grubby hands to your, having accidents
but at some point, disgusting was still disgusting, Especially with an adult woman. — Curtis Sittenfeld

It was generally less shocking to Liz that twenty years after high school she was still her essential self, the self she'd grown up as, unencumbered by spouse or child, than that nearly everyone else had changed, moved on, and multiplied. After — Curtis Sittenfeld

It struck me as so hard to believe I was really getting what I wanted; it was always easier to feel the lack of something than the thing itself. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I wanted to hold happiness in reserve, like a bottle of champagne. I postponed it because I was afraid, because I overvalued it, and then I didn't want to use it up, because what do you wish for then? — Curtis Sittenfeld

She nodded, jotting something in her notebook.
You're writing that down? Has the interview started?
Lee, whenever you're talking to a reporter, you're being interviewed. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Maybe I have always been, as Vi would subsequently accuse me, someone who creates obstacles for myself than looks around in surprise, wondering where they came from. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Time seemed, as it always does in adulthood after a particular stretch has concluded, no matter how ponderous or unpleasant the stretch was to endure, to have passed quickly indeed. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Later on, when I tried to imagine how I might have ruined things, that would occur to me - that I'd so rarely resisted, that I hadn't made it hard enough for him. Maybe it was like gathering your strength and hurling your body against a door you believe to be locked, and then the door opens easily - it wasn't locked at all - and you're standing looking into the room, trying to remember what it was you thought you wanted. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I'm not a Democrat because I haven't thought about the issues. I'm a Democrat because I have. — Curtis Sittenfeld

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

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. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Before and after ... I heard a thousand times that a boy, or a man, can't make you happy, that you have to be happy on your own before you can be happy with another person. All I can say is, I wish it were true. — Curtis Sittenfeld

It occurred to Liz one day, as she waited on hold for an estimate from a yard service, that her parents' home was like an extremely obese person who could no longer see, touch, or maintain jurisdiction over all of his body; there was simply too much of it, and he - they - had grown weary and inflexible. During — Curtis Sittenfeld

I guess because twins have this mystique, and triplets - I think the normal sibling connection potentially can be very powerful, and there's this idea that it's even more powerful. It really is, not just someone like me, but another version of me. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am. — Curtis Sittenfeld

It is not a camera, or a reporter that makes something real and genuine; more often a camera or a reporter does the opposite. — Curtis Sittenfeld

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. — Curtis Sittenfeld

The better you learn to take care of yourself, the less you settle for being around people who can't or won't treat you as well as you're accustomed. — Curtis Sittenfeld