Curtis Sittenfeld
Curtis Sittenfeld
Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeldis an American writer. She is author of five novels: Prep, the tale of a Massachusetts prep school; The Man of My Dreams, a coming-of-age novel and an examination of romantic love; American Wife, a fictional story loosely based on the life of First Lady Laura Bush; Sisterland, which tells the story of identical twins with psychic powers; and the forthcoming Eligible, which is a contemporary retelling of Pride and Prejudice, as well as a number of short...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.
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.
I think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.
I don't think it's shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing.
If I'm at somebody's house and they have magazines on the table and people are chatting, I feel almost a physical urge to start reading the magazines instead of talking to people.
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.
Of course, I didn't imagine then that I could have had a real relationship with any guy. I thought that by virtue of being me I was disqualified.
I actually liked the disolation of winter; it was the season when it was okay to be unhappy. If I were to ever kill myself, I thought it would be in the summer.
But I never thought of who he wasn't, I never had to explain or defend him to myself, I didn't even care what we talked about.
Of course a magazine is usually more interesting than a conversation, because so much more time and preparation has gone into it.
I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.
I had the fleeting thought then that we are each of us pathetic in one way or another, and the trick is to marry a person whose patheticness you can tolerate.
... it struck me as so hard to believe I was really getting what I wanted; it was always easier to feel the lack of something than the thing itself.
I feel like as I've gotten older I've unfortunately come to the decision that a lot of people who seem normal and boring maybe are normal and boring.