Curtis Sittenfeld citations

“The better you learn to take care of yourself, the less you settle for being around people who can't or won't treat you as well as you're accustomed.”

“Anyone who's really interested in anything spends time alone.”

“We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.”

“Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time.”

“… nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.”

“To remain alone did not seem to me a terrible fate, no worse than being falsely joined to another person.”

“I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.”

“Before and after… I heard a thousand times that a boy, or a man, can't make you happy, that you have to be happy on your own before you can be happy with another person. All I can say is, I wish it were true.”

“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?”

“If a man wants to be romantically involved with you, he tries to kiss you. That's the entire story, and if he doesn't kiss you, there is never a reason to wait around for him.”

“There’s a belief that to take care of someone else, or to let someone else take care of you—that both are inherently unfeminist. I don’t agree. There’s no shame in devoting yourself to another person, as long as he devotes himself to you in return.”

“We all make mistakes, don't we? But if you can't forgive yourself, you'll always be an exile in your own life.”

“What greater happiness is there than the privilege of being bored together?”

“If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you.”

“I feel like a lot of life is distasteful and embarrassing. And you just push through it. You fix what you can, and you let time pass.”

“And I am pretty sure that's the point of reading fiction -- so someone else can say in a way you never would have something you recognize immediately.”

“Foolish names and foolish faces often appear in public places.”

“I forgot, over and over, that the fact of my wanting something wasn’t enough to make it happen.”

“While I was in their city, it just seemed like such a mistake that I had ever left home, such an error in judgment in all our parts.”

“I believed then that if you had a good encounter with a person, it was best not to see them again for as long as possible.”

“Flawed as I was, someone recognized me.”

“As for the politics here, what can you do? There’s a lot of posturing, but it’s all kind of meaningless.”