Quotes from Curtis Sittenfeld

First," she said, "he's dull. He's not lively. Now, plenty of women marry dull men, but your Simon isn't kind, either, and that's a terrible combination. Marrying a man who's dull and nice is fine, or a man who's cruel but fascinating—some people have an appetite for that. But marrying a man who's ponderous and unkind is a recipe for unhappiness.

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 and contradictory place, and it had made me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.

To be with him in this way was an almost intolerable ecstasy.

I accidentally knew all the words.

At last, after a minute or so, Bill said, "It's beyond me how anyone could have you as a daughter and not be bursting with pride.

He didn't put it in these terms, and I'm not even sure if he knew this was what he was saying, but his message was: Act like a guy. It was a message that turned out to be invaluable.

All the more reason for you to go

My heart spasmed a little, because of how significant the moment felt—it felt like a threshold between my youth and adulthood, or the exact instant of love coming into existence.

I don't get why you'd write scripts for romantic comedies if you think romance is cheesy nonsense." "That's just it, though," I said. "I don't write from a point of clarity. I write out of confusion.

his unguarded face is startlingly handsome; the truth is that I still can't believe a hot, smart, kind man loves me back.

So often, people let you down; so often, situations turn out disappointingly. But occasionally someone recognizes, acknowledges, your private and truest self.

Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything. We've had lots of empathy; we've had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible. And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible." I

When they left the bar, before parting ways in Port Authority, they stood on the corner of Forty-second Street and Seventh Avenue and continued talking; there were between them always an infinite number of subjects to be addressed and dissected, mulled over and mocked and revised.

Both the lyrics and melody were straightforward, and though I wasn't knowledgeable about what was going on with his guitar, the other instruments, or the backup vocals, the song was pleasurable to listen to at the same time that it was devastatingly sad. Was Noah Brewster himself sad? With that hair and those big white teeth?

And if I was looking at that, would I pick you out from everyone else and say, 'That's the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen'? If I'm being honest, no. But human beings aren't static images. We're dynamic and kinetic, and it's like I said before—right away, I wanted to talk to you, and every time I've talked to you since I've always wanted to keep talking to you.

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

Liz felt the loneliness of having confided something true to a person who didn't care.

which my grandmother's true self was not these guests' business; no one's true self was the business of more than a very small number of family members or close friends.

I believed that a seventeen-minute critique was an act of love, and the truth is that I still do, but the difference between who I was then and who I am now is that now I never assume that anyone I encounter shares my opinion about anything.

now I wonder where I had gotten the idea that for you to participate in a gathering, the other people had to really, really want you to be there and that anything short of rabid enthusiasm on their part meant you'd be a nuisance.

as if there's a clear distinction between real and fake for any of us. Aren't we all performing the role of ourselves?

Virginia Woolf was a babe.' Of the many foolish things I said in graduate school, this is the one that haunts me the most. But I didn't regret it immediately.

Either Ault was a lot harder than my junior high had been, or I was getting dumber- I suspected both. If I wasn't literally getting dumber, I knew at least that I'd lost the glow that surrounds you when the teachers think you're one of the smart, responsible ones, that glow that shines brighter every time you raise your hand in class to say the perfect thing, or you run out of room in a blue book during an exam and have to ask for a second one.

I thought how in the last few weeks, the idea of him had sometimes made me nervous but the reality of him always comforted me.