Quotes from Curtis Sittenfeld

In their articles and on the air, political journalists loved including local color (meat on a stick at the state fair, polka bands, caucuses held in a gun shop or grain elevator) in inverse proportions to how much they'd disdain such spectacles in their actual lives, off the job. A reporter had once told me that if she was getting dinner on her own on the road, she would choose a restaurant by googling the zip code and kale salad.

I have always found it peculiar, to say the least, when conservatives, especially conservative men, make these particular issues their ideological focus; there is something suspect to me about individuals who devote enormous amounts of time and attention dos objects they profess to find repugnant

I have always found it peculiar, to say the least, when conservatives, especially conservative men, make these particular issues their ideological focus; there is something suspect to me about individuals who devote enormous amounts of time and attention to subjects they profess to find repugnant

The tarps Ken Weinrich's crew used has yellow and royal blue stripes, not unlike those for a circus, and this had lent a festive yet undignified mood to the proceedings.

I was me, Hillary, but I also was a vessel and a proxy.

There are two kinds of marriages: the ones where you're privy to how messy they are, and the ones where you're not.

I cried because I knew for certain that I was leaving home, and abruptly, I did not know if it was such a good idea- I realized that I, like my parents, had never believed I'd actually go.

Mr. Bennet stood, dropping his napkin on the table. "As interesting as I find this conversation, an urgent matter has come up. I need a hamburger.

Other people were so unsuccessful at fending off love! Members of Congress who had affairs with their aides, or students who I'd known in college, girls who as freshmen declared themselves lesbians, then graduated with boyfriends- to give in to such love represents, for them, a capitulation or a betrayal, yet apparently the pull was so strong that they couldn't resist. That was what I didn't understand, how people made the leap from not mattering in each others' lives to mattering.

It occurred to Liz one day, as she waited on hold for an estimate from a yard service, that her parents' home was like an extremely obese person who could no longer see, touch, or maintain jurisdiction over all of his body; there was simply too much of it, and he—they—had grown weary and inflexible. During

Well, I said, I once heard a smart person point out that it's hard to determine where the dividing line is between cheesiness and acceptable emotional extravagance. He grinned again. I didn't tell you at the time, but I know exactly where that line is. When it's happening to other people, it's cheesy. When it's happening to you, it's wonderful.

Dena seemed about to respond, but instead, she belched again, a smaller belch that seemed unequal as a harbinger to the monstrous chunky gush that erupted from inside her. I held her hair back and looked away as she finished retching. Working with children had made me less squeamish--they were constantly presenting their grubby hands to your, having accidents--but at some point, disgusting was still disgusting, Especially with an adult woman.

Yet surely she was as culpable as he was; recalling her casual speculation about when Jasper's wife's grandmother might die and thereby free Jasper and Susan to divorce, Liz wondered if a stronger sign of a relationship's essential corruptness could exist than for its official realization to hinge on the demise of another human being.

If you were a writer, you could be impressive in a cerebral sort of way, but if you were a musician, you got to be viscerally magical.

Sometimes I think I've made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught.

We're so lucky, I said. Don't you think? Most people don't have that. I know, everywhere other than New York, if you have a good job and a spouse and kids and a house and a car, those are the markers of maturity and stability and completeness. And you eat your dinner at seven P.M. and go to bed at ten, and go for vigorous jogs on the weekend. If you're into that, great. But there are lots of other ways to put a life together.

It was more when things slowed down, during the parts when you were supposed to have fun, that my lack of friends felt obvious- on Saturday nights, when there dances I didn't go to, and during visitation... I spent those times hiding. Most of the other girls propped open their doors for visitation, but we kept ours shut.

But sometimes speaking is so hard! It's like standing still, then sprinting.

A lesson I learned from Bill, a lesson that perhaps should be obvious, though there's evidence that most other people don't know it, either, is that direct and sincere compliments are shockingly effective—that they feel wonderful. What in theory should sound saccharine or manipulative rarely does in practice, so long as you believe the other person really means it. And we crave praise not, I think, because most of us are egomaniacal. It's because we're human.

I want to open myself up, I want to experience other dimensions, I don't want to be bound by the rules of this world. Does that make me a freak?

I seriously think he's one of those dudes where, his whole life, he's gotten credit for being smart and moral for no reason other than he's tall. Anyway

But I always hoped a man would fall in love with me for my brain.

there was a different way I wrote when, even subconsciously, I was seeking male approval, male sexual approval: a more coy way, more reserved, more nervous about being perceived as angry or vulgar.

It was one thing for 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 to back away.