259 Quotes by Curtis Sittenfeld

I have been granted the terrible privilege of deciding what would have happened with no one left to contradict me. And maybe I am absolutely wrong.

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.

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

Time seemed, as it always does in adulthood after a particular stretch has concluded, no matter how ponderous or unpleasant the stretch was to endure, to have passed quickly indeed.

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

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.

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.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in life is this: Do not preemptively take no for an answer. Do not decide your request has been rejected before it officially has. As with so many other lessons that involve assertion, this one applies far more to women than men.

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.