Curtis Sittenfeld
(Quotes from her books...)

What makes humans human is precisely that they do not know the future. That is why they do the fateful and amusing things they do: who can say how anything will turn out? Therein lies the only hope for redemption, discovery, and--let's be frank--fun, fun, fun! There might be things people will get away with. And not just motel towels. There might be great illicit loves, enduring joy, faith-shaking accidents with farm machinery. But you have to not know in order to see what stories your life's efforts bring you. The mystery is all. -Prep

I wanted to be the person [he] told things to. I wanted him to think I was pretty, I wanted him to be reminded of me by stuff I liked-- pistachios and hooded sweatshirts and the Dylan song "Girl from the North Country"-- and I wanted him to miss me when we were apart. I wanted him to feel, when we were lying in bed together, like he couldn't imagine anywhere better. -Prep

It was like being drunk, how you so rarely feel drunk enough to do the thing you want to, you still feel pinned back by your own sense of rational or the proper, but the next day, hung over, you realize just how drunk you were. You had a window of opportunity. If you had used it, you probably would have embarrassed yourself, but in not using it, you wasted something irretrievable -Prep

In some ways, boys were easier to read than other girls--with boys, it was pursuit and lust, it was effort. - Prep

It was less difficult than it probably should have been to believe that he felt exactly the way about me that I felt about him. I didn't always believe this, but there were times--between classes, say, when we almost collided in the stairwell, and then we just stood there for a few seconds on the landing, face-to-face, not moving, before we continued in opposite directions. If things were normal, wouldn't he have said something, like hi, and couldn't it perhaps be a promising sign that instead he'd said nothing - Prep

But 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. - The Man of My Dreams

And then I think, no, no, it was none of that. It was me--all along, I was the one who resisted. I wanted to hold happiness in reserve, like a bottle of champagne. I postponed it because I was afraid, because I overvalued it, and because I didn't want to use it up, because what do you wish for then? That possibilty, that I was intimidated by getting what I wanted, is the hardest one for me to consider, which might mean it is the likeliest. -The Man of My Dreams

She really does like him, she likes lying next to him, she wants to be around him; when you get down to it, can you say that about many people? - The Man of My Dreams

Later, when I'd think of how I ought to cut him off, I'd think of teaching another person to know me like he did, and it seemed-- with a hypothetical person, especially-- like it would be a lot of work. -The Man of My Dreams

Back