Curtis Sittenfeld Quotes and Sayings - Page 1

“Being raised in an unstable household makes you understand that the world doesn't exist to accommodate you, which... is something a lot of people struggle to understand well into their adulthood. It makes you realize how quickly a situation can shift, how danger really is everywhere. But crises when the occur, do not catch you off guard; you have never believed you lived under a shelter of some essential benevolence. And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Struggle #People #Appreciate

“Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Progress #Matter #Waste

“I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Lonely #Worried #Notice Me

“We have to make mistakes, its how we learn compassion for others”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Mistake #Compassion #Understanding

“Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Book #Thinking #People

“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

#Writing #Trying #Special

“It's never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it's an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Girl #Teenage #Men

“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

#Senior #Wise #Real

“I feel like if you read something, and it makes you so curious about a topic that you then go read something else, that's exciting.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Topics #Curious #Exciting

“People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Powerful #Memories #Book

“I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Character #Males #Female

“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

#Mistake #Forgiving #Forgive Yourself

“... 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

#Believe #Easier #Feels

“I had the fleeting thought then that we are each of us pathetic in one way or another, and the trick is to marry a person whose patheticness you can tolerate.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Fleeting #Way #Tricks

“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

#Might #Rare Moments #Panic

“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.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Care

“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

#Summer #Winter #Unhappy

“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

#Real #Guy #Being Me

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

#Thinking #Trying #Reader

“I don't think it's shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Reading #Writing #Thinking

“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

#People #Really Deep #Novel

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

#Jobs #Book #Teaching

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

#Character #Thinking #Two

“There are so many people who are so much better qualified to write about politics than I am.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Writing #People #Qualified

“The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Book #Thinking #Age

“Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Novelists #Males

“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

#Book #Thinking #Years

“I'm able to separate fiction and reality. I guess it remains to be seen if other people are.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Reality #People #Fiction

“I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Taken #Men #Thinking

“I just write the books that I think I would want to read.”
-- Curtis Sittenfeld

#Book #Writing #Thinking