Curtis Sittenfeld

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

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“Whatever you are, be a good one." -Curtis Sittenfeld (American Wife)”

— Curtis Sittenfeld

I think that there's some confusion in my own mind about what I believe.

— 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

We have to make mistakes, its how we learn compassion for others

— Curtis Sittenfeld

Ironically, writing a novel is not a way to sort out your confusion.

— Curtis Sittenfeld

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

— Curtis Sittenfeld

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

— Curtis Sittenfeld

Before and after... I heard a thousand times that a boy, or a man, can't make you happy, that you have to…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“I want to open myself up, I want to experience other dimensions, I don’t want to be bound by the rules of…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“Even our challenges here have made our lives richer and deepened our ability to feel. Our family has been very lucky to…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“It would in retrospect appear to be a stop on a narrative path that was inevitable, but this is only because most…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

Sometimes, there can be a slightly condescending assumption that anything unlikable about a female character is a mistake, as if they're a…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours.…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“...if he didn't fully understand where I came from, he understood who I was now -- he knew how well done I…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“By the time we met up again, she'd be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“See, I always forget this about you," he says, and even now, long after we first lost our privacy, I can't help…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

..and I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret - everything was…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

I feel like people who criticize authors for being self-promotional fail to recognize that a lot of times their ability to continue…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

I grew up in Cincinnati, the birthplace of the creamiest and most delicious ice cream with the hugest chocolate chips. Graeter's used…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“I noticed then that the red-haired woman was buying the food you eat when you live alone: a box of cereal, a…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“You give too much attention to things that make you unhappy,' Allison says. No doubt she is right. And yet attending to…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“Our windows were open, and the radio had been playing continuously--not one but two Billy Joel songs had come on during our…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“To think of the Midwest as a whole as anything other than beautiful is to ignore the extraordinary power of the land.…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“She came down to my dorm that night, knocking on the door around nine o'clock. Martha was at the library, and I…

— 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 so many people who are so much better qualified to write about politics than I am.

— Curtis Sittenfeld

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

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“Children are nothing but a problem people create and then congratulate themselves on solving.”

— Curtis Sittenfeld

I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women.

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“In the end, there was always your regular life, and no one could deal with it but you.”

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“They only half-jokingly speculated about whether they were the last two single people from their high school class,”

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“...but then I think how I grew sick of kissing him. How can you spend your life with a person you're sick…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

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

— 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…

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“And how heartbreaking, because if it were all just a few degrees different, she is pretty sure they could be quite happy…

— Curtis Sittenfeld