259 Quotes by Curtis Sittenfeld

I am filled with gratitude at the astonishing fact of being married to someone I enjoy talking to, someone with whom I can’t imagine running out of things to say.

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.

And really, wasn’t this endless ruminating over my own likability in itself a thing only a woman would do? Did Bill – or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul – ever ponder their likability, or did they simply go after what they wanted? Did Bill ever stop to think about which of us was more qualified, did he question his own motives for entry into the race? The idea was laughable.

She wasn’t wrong, which wasn’t the same as the idea being a wise one.

Sometimes it amazes me how much these defining parts of our lives hinge on chance.

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?

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 have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors.

Anyone who’s really interested in anything spends time alone.