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" 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. "

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" 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

Special

Try

" The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention. "

" In general, I believe it's fine to have impassioned conversations about Gwyneth Paltrow, but those of us who do so should admit it's a recreational activity and not a moral referendum. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

I Believe

Moral

" 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. "

" The nightmare reviewer is the reviewer who has some sort of agenda that precludes him or her responding sincerely to the book. Often, that agenda is seeming clever and/or taking someone who has received more than her fair share of attention down a notch. "

" I never write something and consciously embed political commentary or any other kind of commentary. I just try to get the characters into a room or out of a room, or onto the plane, or through the grocery store. The political stuff, the class stuff, the gender stuff, is in the air, it's in their interactions, because it's there for all of us. "

" I grew up in Cincinnati, the birthplace of the creamiest and most delicious ice cream with the hugest chocolate chips. Graeter's used to be available only regionally, but an extravagant thing you could do was overnight-ship six pints to another state, in dry ice. "

" 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

Feel

Curious

" I'm able to separate fiction and reality. I guess it remains to be seen if other people are. "

" Everything 'Atonement' does, it does incredibly well, including depicting characters of varying ages and temperaments and showing the intensity of early romantic love and connection and the very different intensity of haunting regret. "

" 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

You

Know

" I just write the books that I think I would want to read. "

" No book I publish will be perfect, but I need to feel I've taken it as far as I can. "

" I think there are people who think 'high school was the peak of my life,' and there are people who think it was dreadful, and then, I think most people are somewhere in between. I do think that it's normal to experience strong emotions during that time, and I think those emotions stay with you. "

" I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

Women

Men

" I'm aware more than I was before I had books published that any review is a bit arbitrary - it's not really, say, 'The New York Times' that's authoritatively weighing in on the quality of a book, though it seems this way to the public. "

" Weirdly, even as I became more confident as a writer and as a person, I completely lost faith in my own ability to shop for clothes. "

" 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

Much

" Of course I know my characters are unlikable sometimes or have prejudices. It's not as if I'm thinking they're so endearing all the time. I guess it's much more interesting to me to write someone who is a combination of good and bad qualities because that's what people are like in real life. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

Time

Life

" I don't think it's shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing. "

" Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am. "

" For most of my life - well, maybe half of my life, but basically until I was in my mid-20s - I wrote stories. From the time I was 5 or 6 until I was 25. And I read a lot of stories during that time. "

" Something that's interesting is how my perspective on different events can change over time even though the events themselves haven't changed. As I get older, I interpret something differently, or I can even interpret a person differently. "

" When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs. "

" High school is very intense for everyone. But at a boarding school, because you're there 24 hours a day, everything gets magnified. "

" I should probably be careful admitting this, but sometimes, when my characters are having a disagreement, it's a disagreement I'm having with myself. I can see both sides of the argument. "

" I don't think I anticipated supporting myself as a writer... I expected I would have to be a teacher or a journalist, that I wouldn't just write full time. It's such a part of my life, and in some ways, it's a very unromantic part of my life. It's almost, to me, like breathing. I don't think about whether I like it or not. "

" A lot of times, in a store, clothes appear strange to me, their cuts or flourishes arbitrary. Why is this look stylish now? How long will it be stylish for? It's slightly embarrassing to admit this - because, as a novelist, I'm supposed to be observant - but I'm flummoxed by the way other women dress. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

Women

Look

" In some ways I think it would be very dignified if I went away for twenty years and then wrote my fourth book. "

" 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. "