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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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Curtis Sittenfeld
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: August 23
Author
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Cincinnati
Ohio
Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld
Elizabeth Sittenfeld
Destruction
Capacity
Realizing
Family
Always
Bystander
Never
Bystanders
Inflict
Possessed

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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 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.
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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.
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I just like to inhabit a character really deeply.
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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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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
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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.
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I just write the books that I think I would want to read.
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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.
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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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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.
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In some ways I think it would be very dignified if I went away for twenty years and then wrote my fourth book.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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