Quotes from Curtis Sittenfeld

eram prea tanara atunci sa-mi dau seama cum simple considerente geografice sau temporale puteau sa separe oamenii. Acestea sunt motivele pentru care n-ar fi trebuit sa ma intreb ce m-am intrebat mai apoi, in timp ce ma uitam la reflexiile noastre sparte in oglinda – daca exista oare ceva, chiar si ghinionul, care san e tina legate una de cealalta in toti anii care aveau sa urmeze.

Perhaps, as was often the case with human interactions, it meant nothing.

But I should note, for all my resistance to organized religion, that I don't believe Charlie could have quit drinking without it. It provided him with a way to structure his behavior, and a way to explain that behavior, both past and present, to himself. Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events? -- and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

she might even have felt that self-congratulatory pride that heterosexual white people are known to experience due to proximate diversity.

You know the advice about how you should always play tennis with people better than you? When I'm talking to you, I'm a funnier and smarter version of myself because you're funny and smart.

If you're our age and single, dating kind of has to be an act of reckless optimism, right? The triumph of hope over experience?

It would in retrospect appear to be a stop on a narrative path that was inevitable, but this is only because most events, most paths, feel inevitable in retrospect.

For months I heard whispers and though it had seemed that they were carried to me on the wind, they were really coming from inside my own head.

Maybe my homesickness was a form of prescience because when I look back, it's the circumstances of this very car ride that I recognize as irretrievable: the experience of driving nowhere in particular with my sister, both of us seventeen years old, the open windows causing our hair to blow wildly; that feeling of being unencumbered; that confidence that our futures would inform the way we wanted them to and our real lives were just beginning.

My own preferences had little bearing on the outcome of events.

It was generally less shocking to Liz that twenty years after high school she was still her essential self, the self she'd grown up as, unencumbered by spouse or child, than that nearly everyone else had changed, moved on, and multiplied. After

Because my mother hadn't been an ostentatious or performative person, it had taken me a long time, until college really, to realize how smart and funny she was, and how generously compassionate.

Liz and Willie were passing a miniature chateau--even in its modified version, it was seven or eight thousand square feet--and Liz said, I guess I'm a Cincinnati opportunist. In New York, I play the wholesome-midwesterner card, but when I'm back here, I consider myself to be a chic outsider. Even before Willie replied, Liz felt the loneliness of having confided something true in a person who didn't care.

Profii de aici le-au vazut pe toate. Noi ne percepem ca individualitati distincte, dar in ochii lor nu suntem decat o masa de nevoi adolescentine." – Gates Medkowski

If I moved back, I'm sure I'd find some great place to live. I wouldn't have to make a reservation to take a spin class or wait in line just to get into the grocery store. But then I'd look up one day and be like, 'What the fuck have I done?'

era greu sa-mi imaginez ca m-as fi putut simti vreodata ca o tipa "misto", dar ma simteam ca o persoana de care eu insami as fi fost intrigata in primii mei ani acolo.

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

I enjoyed making them, and if it's great reverence you're looking for, or earnest expressions of gratitude - well, then you don't work with kids.

Only part you have to apologize for is getting me all horned up and then passing out, but I'll take a rain check

I knew all this, I understood the rules, but still, nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.

There's no better investment than your cleavage. Charlotte smirked. I believe they teach that in business school.

See, I always forget this about you, he says, and even now, long after we first lost our privacy, I can't help wondering who's overhearing him. Every decade, you like to pin me to the ground, pull open my mouth, and take a sh** right into it.

His expression became both very tender and very amused, as if there were an excellent inside joke between us, and he tilted his head to the right and looked at me with a focused kind of sweetness and warmth.

I liked being around other people during the day, and I was relieved to be alone late at night; it was the latter that made the former possible. In fact, setting up my nest often made me think of a Wordsworth phrase I'd learned in English class as a high school junior: emotion recollected in tranquillity.