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" 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. "

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" 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

You

Day

Everyone

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I enjoy reading tips about how to be more organized, and I rarely implement them. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

How

Enjoy

" 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. "

" Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist. "

" I don't think everyone is equally haunted by high school, but I also don't think it's unusual to be. "

" 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 so trying to give up meat. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

Give

Meat

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

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

" There's an ongoing 'water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink' situation at my house in terms of both pens and paper. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" In 2013, before the publication of my fourth novel, I met with a stylist at Nordstrom. Since then, I've rarely shopped for 'event clothes' on my own. I usually do it with my sisters or a friend; if I'm alone, I take pictures of myself in the dressing room and text them to my sisters. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

" 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

" In general, when any of us get outraged by relatively minor pop-cultural phenomena, I suspect it's a way of relaxing and not focussing on more daunting and intractable problems, whether personal or social. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

Get

Problems

" 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. "