Quotes from Curtis Sittenfeld

And I didn't yet understand that just because you can recognize what another person wants and just because that person is older and more powerful than you are, you don't have to give it to them.

Here's what I've learned about the people in this city," Darcy was saying. "They grade their women on a curve. If someone is described as sophisticated, it means once during college she visited Paris, and if someone is described as beautiful, it means she's fifteen pounds overweight instead of forty. And

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

have you heard the sex party rumor?" She winced and said, "It actually does sound familiar." I had the impulse to shake my head, but I didn't want to mess up Veronica's handiwork. I said, "You know when true equality will be achieved? When a woman with these kinds of skeletons in her closet has the nerve to run for office." 2004

He's a lawyer in Atlanta, and he's very active in his church," Mrs. Bennet said. "If that's not the description of a man looking for a wife, I don't know what is.

But the truth was that I didn't want to stay in Riley. The pulls of familial love and obligation could not, for the moment, compete with the promise of early-relationship sex. Starlight and beer and our twisting, naked bodies--that was what I wanted, not a seat at a dining room table with two old women eating breaded veal cutlets and Vienna torte.

It was one thingfor a person who didn't really know me to act distant, but it was quite another for someone to get to know me and then back away.

She would say that we create our own reality-that the truth, ultimately, is what we choose to believe.

Does being forty feel fabulous and foxy?" Liz asked.

Right? Because hot eventually gets boring, but funny never does.

Then she was in a different part of the club, and she and Kitty were dancing to a rap song they both knew all the words to, and Kitty was wearing a thin plastic headband with antennae off of which wobbled life-sized sparkly pink penises. How marvelous this headband was! Even more marvelously, Kitty pointed out that Liz was wearing an identical one. Truly, it was a magical night.

In my expectation that good fortune will lead inextricably to its reversal, I should note that I don't think I'm less deserving of happiness than anyone else; it is that in an unequal world, nobody deserves the privileges I enjoy.

Oh, how different my life would have been had I not grown up in the same house with my grandmother, how much narrower and blander! 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.

I have no idea, of course, that of all the feelings of my youth that would pass, it was this one, of an abundance of time so great as to routinely be unfillable, that would vanish with the least ceremony.

It's hard to imagine him angry without them. It must be like watching a game show by yourself, how calling out the answers feels silly and pointless. What is fury without witnesses? Where's the tension minus an audience to wonder what you'll do next?

And the reason I'm telling you all this is that I want you to know no one in my life has ever made me feel worse about myself than you.

Did I used to think being pretty was my primary obligation because I was in some way delusional? Or was it that I'd absorbed the messages I was meant to absorb with the same diligence with which I studied? As the mother of a daughter, I hope she won't judge herself as harshly as I judged myself, but her personality is so unlike mine - she is boisterous and outspoken - that I'm not inordinately concerned.

perhaps this was how grown-up conversations worked—not that your communication didn't falter, but that you both made good-faith attempts to rectify things after it had.

In the end, there was always your regular life, and no one could deal with it but you.

Dintre toate locurile prin care am fost in toata viata mea, Ault a fost spatial cu cea mai mare densitate de oameni de care ma puteam indragosti.

Cu ani mai tarziu, la o nunta, l-am auzit pe preot descriind casnicia ca pe o frangere in doua a tristetii si o dublare a bucuriei, si nu mi-a trecut prin minte nici tipul cu care eram atunci si nici vreun sot perfect, imaginar, din viitorul meu; in schimb, m-am gandit imediat la Matha.

In camine, unii dintre elevi se apucasera deja sa impacheteze, lucru pe care eu il uram – vedeam peretii goi si suprafetele lipsite de obiecte ca pe niste aluzii rauvoitoare la cat de efemer era totul in jur, cat de iluzorie era senzatia pe care o avem ca ne apartine vreodata ceva.

And how heartbreaking, because if it were all just a few degrees different, she is pretty sure they could be quite happy together.

Puteam continua sa fiu vechea Lee, cea buna si incompetenta, Lee cea draguta si plina de fisuri, un Labrador flocos si auriu, care nu poate sta departe de nicio balta si se tot intoarce acasa cu blana uda si mirosind neplacut.