Curtis Sittenfeld Thinking Quotations

I don't think that I would ever, while writing, think to myself, "I need a little more psychological realism."

I like it when characters are some combination of appealing and maybe flawed or self-interested. I think in terms of scenes, and what I want a scene to achieve, and I think that the psychological realism arises from that.

I think I would have liked to have been a twin. Sometimes my sisters and I get mistaken for twins, and I always take it as a compliment.

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

I guess because twins have this mystique, and triplets - I think the normal sibling connection potentially can be very powerful, and there's this idea that it's even more powerful. It really is, not just someone like me, but another version of me.

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

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

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.

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

I gave people the benefit of the doubt, thinking, so many people that appear very calm and even boring must have all these wild emotions and crazy ideas.

There are people we treat wrong and later we're prepared to treat other people right. Perhaps this sounds mercenary, but I feel grateful for these trial relationships, and I would like to think it all evens out - surely, unknowingly, I have served as practice for other people.

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

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

I think that there's some confusion in my own mind about what I believe.

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

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