Curtis Sittenfeld

“I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself.”

“I heard Gillian say, with a laugh, “At this point, does anyone expect the liberals not to be total hypocrites?” She was oblivious to the possibility that perhaps not everyone present shared her views, and I thought, You’re sixteen. How can you already be a Republican?”

“In 2013, before the publication of my fourth novel, I met with a stylist at Nordstrom. Since then, I've rarely shopped for 'event clothes' on my own. I usually do it with my sisters or a friend; if I'm alone, I take pictures of myself in the dressing room and text them to my sisters.”

“Weirdly, even as I became more confident as a writer and as a person, I completely lost faith in my own ability to shop for clothes.”

“I'm able to separate fiction and reality. I guess it remains to be seen if other people are.”

“You never know the nature of another couple's marriage, do you?”

“I don't think I anticipated supporting myself as a writer... I expected I would have to be a teacher or a journalist, that I wouldn't just write full time. It's such a part of my life, and in some ways, it's a very unromantic part of my life. It's almost, to me, like breathing. I don't think about whether I like it or not.”

“I always wrote from a very young age, literally from the time I learned how to read and write.”

“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.”

“I'm so trying to give up meat.”

“People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination.”

“When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.”

“In general, I believe it's fine to have impassioned conversations about Gwyneth Paltrow, but those of us who do so should admit it's a recreational activity and not a moral referendum.”

“She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it.”

“I see 'Eligible' as a homage, and I see 'Pride and Prejudice' as a perfect book. You can dispute whether this project is a good idea, but you can't dispute my fondness for the novel.”

“I never write something and consciously embed political commentary or any other kind of commentary. I just try to get the characters into a room or out of a room, or onto the plane, or through the grocery store. The political stuff, the class stuff, the gender stuff, is in the air, it's in their interactions, because it's there for all of us.”

“Of course I know my characters are unlikable sometimes or have prejudices. It's not as if I'm thinking they're so endearing all the time. I guess it's much more interesting to me to write someone who is a combination of good and bad qualities because that's what people are like in real life.”

“The nightmare reviewer is the reviewer who has some sort of agenda that precludes him or her responding sincerely to the book. Often, that agenda is seeming clever and/or taking someone who has received more than her fair share of attention down a notch.”

“I think there are people who think 'high school was the peak of my life,' and there are people who think it was dreadful, and then, I think most people are somewhere in between. I do think that it's normal to experience strong emotions during that time, and I think those emotions stay with you.”

“I wanted to hold happiness in reserve, like a bottle of champagne. I postponed it because I was afraid, because I overvalued it, and then I didn't want to use it up, because what do you wish for then?”