Curtis Sittenfeld
Curtis Sittenfeld
Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeldis an American writer. She is author of five novels: Prep, the tale of a Massachusetts prep school; The Man of My Dreams, a coming-of-age novel and an examination of romantic love; American Wife, a fictional story loosely based on the life of First Lady Laura Bush; Sisterland, which tells the story of identical twins with psychic powers; and the forthcoming Eligible, which is a contemporary retelling of Pride and Prejudice, as well as a number of short...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
Curtis Sittenfeld quotes about
fate terrible persons
To remain alone did not seem to me a terrible fate, no worse than being falsely joined to another person.
home night appreciate
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.
character thinking self
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.
needs way unbearable
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.
real opposites cameras
It is not a camera, or a reporter that makes something real and genuine; more often a camera or a reporter does the opposite.
secret mouths might
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.
reading book character
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.
soccer art writing
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.
people treats prepared
There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.
writing thinking littles
I don't think that I would ever, while writing, think to myself, "I need a little more psychological realism."
people smirk looks
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.
people care settling
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.
notebook writing talking
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.
people decision normal
I feel like as I've gotten older I've unfortunately come to the decision that a lot of people who seem normal and boring maybe are normal and boring.