Quotes from Curtis Sittenfeld

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.

Sometimes when I speak, I feel like I'm writing dialogue for the character of myself. I'm impersonating a normal human when really I'm a confused freak.

it never comes down to a single thing you did or didn't do or say. You might convince yourself it did, but it didn't.

And it wasn't that you couldn't be friends with a married woman, but you weren't friends in the same way, she didn't have the same freedom i her schedule, especially not after she had children, and even before that, she didn't need you; you needed friendship, and friendship to her was auxiliary, extra.

Liz felt the loneliness of confiding something true in a person who didn't care.

I think my mother found her mother-in-law entertaining, and in a person who entertains us, there is much we forgive.

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.

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.

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.

I decided that I wanted to say to Sin-Jun, I like your skirt. But sometimes speaking is so hard! It's like standing still, then sprinting. I kept rehearsing the sentence in my head, examining it for flaws.

Part of getting what you want is asking for it.

I'm not a Democrat because I haven't thought about the issues. I'm a Democrat because I have.

Some people who run for office want to create change, and some want everyone to fall in love with them.

All of which was to say that the sketches I'd written over the years about the absurdity and arbitrariness of beauty standards for women had arisen not from my clear-eyed renunciation of them but from my resentment at their hold on me.

Being called baby: like safaris and bowling leagues, a phenomenon she never thought she'd experience first hand.

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

I'd think, One of the times she leaves will be the last time I see her. It destroyed me. I didn't want us to have a last time, and that was how I realized I'd fallen in love with you.

if he didn't fully understand where I came from, he understood who I was now -- he knew how well done I liked my steak, knew the color of my toothbrush, the expression I made when I realized I'd forgotten to roll up my car window before it rained.

As they sat, Kathy de Bourgh smiled and said, "Now that we've both apologized within the first thirty seconds of our conversation about women and power, shall we begin?

In my youth, I had respected my father's intelligence, not recognizing how much sharper my mother's was because hers was concealed by being pleasant and female.

The margin between staying and leaving was so thin; really, it could have gone either way.

When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times. —Mark Twain

You don't make waves unless there's a reason, and it better be good. Because once you do, that's it. You're a trouble make, and they never think of you any other way.

I take it you don't believe in love at first sight." "Does anyone over the age of thirteen? Do you?" "I don't, no," Darcy said. "But I don't rule out for others what I haven't experienced firsthand.