Top 30 Curtis Sittenfeld Quotes

I see ‘Eligible’ as a homage, and I see ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as a perfect book. You can dispute whether this project is a good idea, but you can’t dispute my fondness for the novel.

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

In general, when any of us get outraged by relatively minor pop-cultural phenomena, I suspect it’s a way of relaxing and not focussing on more daunting and intractable problems, whether personal or social.

I always wrote from a very young age, literally from the time I learned how to read and write.

The fact is that in this day and age I don’t think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.

Well, I think that if you sincerely try to imagine what life is like for another person – not in a mocking way, not in a satirical way, but in a sincere, compassionate way – I don’t think that’s exploitive.

I think there are people who think ‘high school was the peak of my life,’ and there are people who think it was dreadful, and then, I think most people are somewhere in between. I do think that it’s normal to experience strong emotions during that time, and I think those emotions stay with you.

I’m so trying to give up meat.

There are always interesting, innovative, dynamic stories being written and being published. They’re not always being prominently published, but they’re being published.

I don’t think it’s shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing.

I grew up in Cincinnati, the birthplace of the creamiest and most delicious ice cream with the hugest chocolate chips. Graeter’s used to be available only regionally, but an extravagant thing you could do was overnight-ship six pints to another state, in dry ice.

Everything ‘Atonement’ does, it does incredibly well, including depicting characters of varying ages and temperaments and showing the intensity of early romantic love and connection and the very different intensity of haunting regret.

Weirdly, even as I became more confident as a writer and as a person, I completely lost faith in my own ability to shop for clothes.

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.

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.

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

In general, I believe it’s fine to have impassioned conversations about Gwyneth Paltrow, but those of us who do so should admit it’s a recreational activity and not a moral referendum.

High school is very intense for everyone. But at a boarding school, because you’re there 24 hours a day, everything gets magnified.

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.

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

There’s an ongoing ‘water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink’ situation at my house in terms of both pens and paper.

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

Sometimes, there can be a slightly condescending assumption that anything unlikable about a female character is a mistake, as if they’re a contestant in a beauty pageant and have to seem charming and upbeat all the time.

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

I enjoy reading tips about how to be more organized, and I rarely implement them.

Something that’s interesting is how my perspective on different events can change over time even though the events themselves haven’t changed. As I get older, I interpret something differently, or I can even interpret a person differently.

Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist.

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.

I’m aware more than I was before I had books published that any review is a bit arbitrary – it’s not really, say, ‘The New York Times’ that’s authoritatively weighing in on the quality of a book, though it seems this way to the public.

I don’t think everyone is equally haunted by high school, but I also don’t think it’s unusual to be.