“I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.”
―
Curtis Sittenfeld,
Prep
“The better you learn to take care of yourself, the less you settle for being around people who can't or won't treat you as well as you're accustomed.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld
“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.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“Anyone who's really interested in anything spends time alone.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
“The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“... nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams
“To remain alone did not seem to me a terrible fate, no worse than being falsely joined to another person.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
“Before and after... I heard a thousand times that a boy, or a man, can't make you happy, that you have to be happy on your own before you can be happy with another person. All I can say is, I wish it were true.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“There’s a belief that to take care of someone else, or to let someone else take care of you—that both are inherently unfeminist. I don’t agree. There’s no shame in devoting yourself to another person, as long as he devotes himself to you in return.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Eligible
“Later on, when I tried to imagine how I might have ruined things, that would occur to me - that I'd so rarely resisted, that I hadn't made it hard enough for him. Maybe it was like gathering your strength and hurling your body against a door you believe to be locked, and then the door opens easily - it wasn't locked at all - and you're standing looking into the room, trying to remember what it was you thought you wanted.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“I wanted to hold happiness in reserve, like a bottle of champagne. I postponed it because I was afraid, because I overvalued it, and then I didn't want to use it up, because what do you wish for then?” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams
“I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will--that is the part that's almost unbearable.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“And this is how I know that it's all just words, words, words - that fundamentally, they make no difference... Our relationship, for as long as things were good, and in that moment when they could have been good again, was about the irrelevance of words. You feel what you feel, you act as you act, who in the history of the world has ever been convinced by a well-reasoned argument?” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“If a man wants to be romantically involved with you, he tries to kiss you. That's the entire story, and if he doesn't kiss you, there is never a reason to wait around for him.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams
“She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
“The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“The better you learn to take care of yourself, the less you settle for being around people who can't or won't treat you as well as you're accustomed.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld
“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.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“Anyone who's really interested in anything spends time alone.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
“The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“... nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams
“To remain alone did not seem to me a terrible fate, no worse than being falsely joined to another person.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
“Before and after... I heard a thousand times that a boy, or a man, can't make you happy, that you have to be happy on your own before you can be happy with another person. All I can say is, I wish it were true.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“There’s a belief that to take care of someone else, or to let someone else take care of you—that both are inherently unfeminist. I don’t agree. There’s no shame in devoting yourself to another person, as long as he devotes himself to you in return.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Eligible
“Later on, when I tried to imagine how I might have ruined things, that would occur to me - that I'd so rarely resisted, that I hadn't made it hard enough for him. Maybe it was like gathering your strength and hurling your body against a door you believe to be locked, and then the door opens easily - it wasn't locked at all - and you're standing looking into the room, trying to remember what it was you thought you wanted.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“I wanted to hold happiness in reserve, like a bottle of champagne. I postponed it because I was afraid, because I overvalued it, and then I didn't want to use it up, because what do you wish for then?” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams
“I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will--that is the part that's almost unbearable.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“And this is how I know that it's all just words, words, words - that fundamentally, they make no difference... Our relationship, for as long as things were good, and in that moment when they could have been good again, was about the irrelevance of words. You feel what you feel, you act as you act, who in the history of the world has ever been convinced by a well-reasoned argument?” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
“If a man wants to be romantically involved with you, he tries to kiss you. That's the entire story, and if he doesn't kiss you, there is never a reason to wait around for him.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams
“She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
“The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world.” ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
