Quote

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.

Curtis Sittenfeld

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Curtis Sittenfeld
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: August 23
Author
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Cincinnati
Ohio
Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld
Elizabeth Sittenfeld
Certain
Pull
Best
Remain
Inconspicuous
Feel
Sacrifice
Ordinarily
Sometimes
Risk
Entertained
Feels
Courses
Gesture
People
Course
Seeming
Keep
Gestures
Thought
Odd

More quotes by Curtis Sittenfeld

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To remain alone did not seem to me a terrible fate, no worse than being falsely joined to another person.
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.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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.
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She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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?
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There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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We have to make mistakes, its how we learn compassion for others
Curtis Sittenfeld
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Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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I just write the books that I think I would want to read.
Curtis Sittenfeld
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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.
Curtis Sittenfeld