Curtis Sittenfeld Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• 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

  Waiting, Pressure, Situation

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2005). “Prep: a novel”

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Special, Trying

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Mistake, Doors, Worry

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2005). “Prep: a novel”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Reading, Talking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Boys, Wish

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2005). “Prep: a novel”

  4 Copy quote

• ..and I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret - everything was better when you were denied and could feel tormented by curiousity or loneliness. But the moment of something happening was treacherous. It was just so tiring to have to worry about whether your face was peeling, or to have to laugh at stories that weren’t funny.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Loneliness, Believe, Boys

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2005). “Prep: a novel”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Irrelevance, Differences, Long

  12 Copy quote

• I think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Believe, Doors, Trying

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2005). “Prep: a novel”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Sentimental, Serious

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Notebook, Writing, Talking

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2013). “Prep and American Wife: Two Bestselling Novels”, p.392, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Character, Thinking, Self

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  People, Treats, Prepared

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2013). “Prep and American Wife: Two Bestselling Novels”, p.271, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• We all stood and gathered our backpacks and I looked at the floor around my chair to make sure I hadn’t dropped anything. I was terrified of unwittingly leaving behind a scrap of paper on which were written all my private desires and humiliations. The fact that no such scrap of paper existed, that I did not even keep a diary or write letters except bland, earnest, falsely cheerful ones to my family (We lost to St. Francis in soccer, but I think we’ll win our game this Saturday; we are working on self-portraits in art class, and the hardest part for me is the nose) never decreased my fear.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Soccer, Art, Writing

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2005). “Prep: a novel”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• I think I would have liked to have been a twin... Sometimes my sisters and I get mistaken for twins, and I always take it as a compliment.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Thinking, Twins, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• She opened her mouth but did not immediately speak, and I felt, simultaneously, the impulse to coax the words from her and the impulse to suppress them. I always thought I wanted to know a secret, or I wanted an event to unfold – 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

  Secret, Events, Mouths

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2005). “Prep: a novel”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Real, Opposites, Cameras

  4 Copy quote

• I'm able to separate fiction and reality. I guess it remains to be seen if other people are.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Reality, People, Fiction

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Crazy, Thinking, Ideas

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• There are so many people who are so much better qualified to write about politics than I am.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Writing, People, Qualified

  4 Copy quote

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

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Hell, Bent, Prove

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Mean, Average, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Children, Thinking, Age

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not afraid of writing about sensitive subjects, but I want to be careful how I do so and I know not all readers will think I have been, of course.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Writing, Thinking, Sensitive

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

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