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My Boarding School Experience Was The Only Thing I Had Strong Enough Feelings To Write About For Hundreds And Hundreds Of Pages. I Can Still Smell The Formaldehyde Of The Fetal Pigs In Biology.

-Curtis Sittenfeld

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My Boarding School Experience

Curtis Sittenfeld

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My Boarding School Experience Was The Only Thing I Had Strong Enough Feelings To Write About For Hundreds And Hundreds Of Pages. I Can Still Smell The Formaldehyde Of The Fetal Pigs In Biology.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

Well, I Think In My First Two Novels, Both The Characters Are Pretty Neurotic, Which I Would Say That I Am.

I'm So Trying To Give Up Meat.

There Are People We Treat Wrong And Later We're Prepared To Treat Other People Right. Perhaps This Sounds Mercenary, But I Feel Grateful For These Trial Relationships, And I Would Like To Think It All Evens Out - Surely, Unknowingly, I Have Served As Practice For Other People.

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.

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

My Boarding School Experience Was The Only Thing I Had Strong Enough Feelings To Write About For Hundreds And Hundreds Of Pages. I Can Still Smell The Formaldehyde Of The Fetal Pigs In Biology.

... 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What Greater Happiness Is There Than The Privilege Of Being Bored Together?

I've Had People Say Very Dismissive Things About My Books, But I Also Feel Like I Probably Have More Readers Because I'm A Woman. I Mean, More Readers Are Women And More People Who Buy Books Are Women, So I Don't Feel Like It's A Total Disadvantage To Be A Female Writer.

The Best Part Of Being A Writer For Me Is Immersing Myself In A Fictional World, Which Is The Opposite Of Being On Social Media. At The Same Time, If No One Ever Read My Work, If I Was Writing Solely For Myself, I Bet It Would Be Lonely And A Lot Less Fun.

There Are A Lot Of Things In The World That Are A Lot Weirder Than Psychic Abilities, That We Accept As True.

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.

High School Is Very Intense For Everyone. But At A Boarding School, Because You're There 24 Hours A Day, Everything Gets Magnified.

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.

I Just Write The Books That I Think I Would Want To Read.

I Liked The Idea Of Giving Eligible A Feminist Flavor. While I Do Think That In Pride And Prejudice, Liz Bennet Is Very Bold, She Is Also Very Restricted In Terms Of What's Appropriate For Her To Do And The Ways It's Appropriate For Her To Behave. One Of The Differences Between Pride And Prejudice And Eligible Is That My Female Characters Take More Initiative In Their Romantic Lives.

When I Was Writing My First Two Books I Was Also Freelancing And Teaching And Doing Other Odd Jobs.

Of Course A Magazine Is Usually More Interesting Than A Conversation, Because So Much More Time And Preparation Has Gone Into It.

..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.

I'm Able To Separate Fiction And Reality. I Guess It Remains To Be Seen If Other People Are.

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.

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.

In Some Ways I Think It Would Be Very Dignified If I Went Away For Twenty Years And Then Wrote My Fourth Book.

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.

I Just Like To Inhabit A Character Really Deeply.

When You Are A High School Girl, There Is Nothing More Miraculous Than A High School Boy.

Obviously The Bar Is Much Higher Now For A Behavior To Be Scandalous. Social Media Has Really Changed The Way People Live. It's Not A New Impulse; It's Just Being Enacted In A New Way.

She Really Does Like Him, She Likes Lying Next To Him, She Wants To Be Around Him; When You Get Down To It, Can You Say That About Many People?

I Don't Think That I Would Ever, While Writing, Think To Myself, "i Need A Little More Psychological Realism."

There Are So Many People Who Are So Much Better Qualified To Write About Politics Than I Am.

There's A Lot That's Not Explained About The Universe. And Psychic-ness Is Not Stranger Than That.

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.

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.

I Think That There's Some Confusion In My Own Mind About What I Believe.

I Was 16 Years Old, Attending Boarding School, And I Loved Pride And Prejudice. From The Opening Pages, I Loved It. And I Will Say In My Class, Not One But Two Boys Told Me That I Reminded Them Of Lizzy Bennet. I Didn't Realize It At The Time But This Was The Nicest Thing That Any Male Would Ever Say To Me. This Was As Good As It Got.

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.

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.

Personally, I Have Never Wished I Were A Male Novelist.

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.

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.

In Life We're Most Hell-bent On Proving Things That We're Not Really Sure Are True.

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.

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.

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.

... Nothing Broke My Heart Like The Slow Death Of A Shared Joke That Had Once Seemed Genuinely Funny.

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.

Even More Than Getting Compliments On Social Media, What I Love Is When Some Random Stranger Says Something Very Funny Or Insightful About My Books, Often In 140 Characters Or Less! It's A Very Casual, Low-stakes, Non-burdensome Way Of Connecting That I Think Is Fun For Both The Writer And The Reader. And There Are A Lot Of Clever People Out There Who Have No Connection To Publishing.

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.

We All Make Mistakes, Don't We? But If You Can't Forgive Yourself, You'll Always Be An Exile In Your Own Life.

Forgive Yourself

I Do Think I Was Trying To Entertain The Reader More Than I Was Trying To Purge Myself.

It Is Not A Camera, Or A Reporter That Makes Something Real And Genuine; More Often A Camera Or A Reporter Does The Opposite.

Anyone Who's Really Interested In Anything Spends Time Alone.

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 Feel Like People Who Criticize Authors For Being Self-promotional Fail To Recognize That A Lot Of Times Their Ability To Continue Writing Hinges On Sales And Recognition. Some Of It Is For Fun, Some Of It Is For Ego, But A Lot Of It Is Just Writers Trying To Ensure Longevity To Their Career.

And I Am Pretty Sure That's The Point Of Reading Fiction -- So Someone Else Can Say In A Way You Never Would Have Something You Recognize Immediately.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Ironically, Writing A Novel Is Not A Way To Sort Out Your Confusion.

I Don't Think It's Shameful To Admit That Some Days Your Time Can Be Better Spent Reading Than Writing.

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.

The Fact Is That In This Day And Age I Don't Think Any Novelist Can Assume That A Book Will Get Attention.

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.

It's Different To Read A Book For Pleasure Than To Read It Analytically. In The Past, I'd Read Pride And Prejudice For Pleasure. This Time, I Was Really Looking At The Structure, The Order Of Events, How The Characters Interact With Each Other And How The Book Is Paced.

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.

I Thought, If I Write A Book That Is Not A Retelling Of Pride And Prejudice, It's Not Going To Mean That I Will Not Get Any Criticism. I Might As Well Write The Book That I Want To Write.

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

I Think It's Significantly Easier To Be A Female Writer Today Than In The Early 1800's. That Said, It's Hard To Imagine Almost Anyone Who Knows Anything About Publishing Disagreeing With The Statement That Women Writers Today Are Often Taken Much Less Seriously Than Men Writers. But It's Hard To Quantify, And Even Define, What Being Taken Seriously Means.

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.

I Always Worried Someone Would Notice Me, And Then When No One Did, I Felt Lonely.

I Think In General, Novels By Men Tend To Be Taken More Seriously Than Novels By Women.

I Feel That Pride And Prejudice Is An Incredibly Well Constructed Novel On Every Level. The Dialogue Is Great. The Character Development Is Great. The Plotting Is Great. The Pacing Is Great. The Language Is Great.

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?

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.

There Are People We Treat Wrong And Later, We're Prepared To Treat Other People Right.

I Don't Know What It Is About Human Beings But Most Of Us Really Like Reading About Or Observing Sexual Tension And Romance. It's Just So Much Fun. I Don't Know If There Is Some Darwinian Thing In Us That Really Responds To That, But I Think The Most Memorable Scenes To Me In Books And Movies Are The Ones Where A Couple Is About To Kiss.

She Has Always Been A Bystander In Family Destruction, Never Realizing She Herself Possessed The Capacity To Inflict It.

To Remain Alone Did Not Seem To Me A Terrible Fate, No Worse Than Being Falsely Joined To Another Person.

I Wanted My Life To Start - But In Those Rare Moments When It Seemed Like Something Might Actually Change, Panic Shot Through Me.

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.

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?

I Guess I Consider Myself At Times To Have Intuition.

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