I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself.
Curtis SittenfeldI think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.
Curtis SittenfeldShe really does like him, she likes lying next to him, she wants to be around him; when you get down to it, can you say that about many people?
Curtis SittenfeldIt'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 SittenfeldThe 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