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

Curtis Sittenfeld

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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. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

" 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. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

" 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. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

" 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

" 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. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

" I just think that people are complicated, both men and women. It happens that I write more about women. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

" 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

" 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. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

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

Curtis Sittenfeld

" 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

" 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'm so trying to give up meat. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

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

Curtis Sittenfeld

" 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. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

" 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. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

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

Curtis Sittenfeld

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

Curtis Sittenfeld

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

Curtis Sittenfeld

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

Curtis Sittenfeld

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

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

" I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself. "

Curtis Sittenfeld

" I see 'Eligible' as a homage, and I see 'Pride and Prejudice' as a perfect book. You can dispute whether this project is a good idea, but you can't dispute my fondness for the novel. "

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

" 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. "

Curtis Sittenfeld