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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

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I Have Always Found

Curtis Sittenfeld

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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.

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

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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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'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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

We Have To Make Mistakes, Its How We Learn Compassion For Others

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

..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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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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.

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I Just Like To Inhabit A Character Really Deeply.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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'm So Trying To Give Up Meat.

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?

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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