Curtis Sittenfeld Quotes

34 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
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
I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will—that is the part that's almost unbearable.

Curtis Sittenfeld
To be a person who sees a political ad on television and takes the statements in it as fact, how can you exist in this world? How is it you're not robbed daily by charlatans who knock at your door?

Curtis Sittenfeld
Is the depressing part that he's only half right - it's not that she doesn't need rescuing but that nobody else will be able to do it? She has always somehow known that she is the one who will have to rescue herself. Or maybe what's depressing is that this knowledge seems like it should make life easier, and instead it makes it harder.

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
Anyone who's really interested in anything spends time alone.

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
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
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
I heard Gillian say, with a laugh, At this point, does anyone expect the liberals not to be total hypocrites? She was oblivious to the possibility that perhaps not everyone present shared her views, and I thought, You're sixteen. How can you already be a Republican?

Curtis Sittenfeld
Of course a magazine is usually more interesting than a conversation, because so much more time and preparation has gone into it.

Curtis Sittenfeld
There are a lot of things in the world that are a lot weirder than psychic abilities, that we accept as true.

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

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
After I'd told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, 'Did he kiss you?' 'John and Martin totally would have seen that,' I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.

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

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
Ordinarily, of course, I thought it best to remain inconspicuous, but the gesture had a certain irresistable theatricaility, and an inevitablility. Sometimes you can feel the pull of what other people want from you, and you sacrifice yourself, you risk seeming odd or sunsavory, to keep them entertained.

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

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

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

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
When you are a high school girl, there is nothing more miraculous than a high school boy.

Curtis Sittenfeld
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.

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
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
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