I feel like if you read something, and it makes you so curious about a topic that you then go read something else, that’s exciting. – Curtis Sittenfeld
I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women. – Curtis Sittenfeld
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. – Curtis Sittenfeld
It’s never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it’s an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man. – Curtis Sittenfeld
Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am. – Curtis Sittenfeld
Well, I think that if you sincerely try to imagine what life is like for another person – not in a mocking way, not in a satirical way, but in a sincere, compassionate way – I don’t think that’s exploitive. – Curtis Sittenfeld
I don’t think it’s shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing. – Curtis Sittenfeld
In some ways I think it would be very dignified if I went away for twenty years and then wrote my fourth book. – Curtis Sittenfeld
When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs. – Curtis Sittenfeld
There are so many people who are so much better qualified to write about politics than I am. – Curtis Sittenfeld
I just think that people are complicated, both men and women. It happens that I write more about women. – Curtis Sittenfeld
The fact is that in this day and age I don’t think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention. – Curtis Sittenfeld
High school is very intense for everyone. But at a boarding school, because you’re there 24 hours a day, everything gets magnified. – Curtis Sittenfeld
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. – Curtis Sittenfeld
I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself. – Curtis Sittenfeld
Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you’re so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try. – Curtis Sittenfeld
I don’t really have special rituals, but I don’t try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I’m truly concentrating. – Curtis Sittenfeld
I’m able to separate fiction and reality. I guess it remains to be seen if other people are. – Curtis Sittenfeld
You know, the point of a novel – or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people’s lives and inside their personal experiences. – Curtis Sittenfeld
My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology. – Curtis Sittenfeld
