Curtis Sittenfeld Quote

Of course, now I wonder where I had gotten the idea that for you to participate in a gathering, the other people had to really, really want you to be there and that anything short of rabid enthusiasm on their part meant you'd be a nuisance. Where had I gotten the idea that being a nuisance was that big a deal? Sometimes now I think of all the opportunities I didn't take - to get a manicure in town, to watch television in another dorm, to go outside for a snowball fight - and of how refusal became a habit for me, and then I felt it would be conspicuous if I ever did join in.

Curtis Sittenfeld

Of course, now I wonder where I had gotten the idea that for you to participate in a gathering, the other people had to really, really want you to be there and that anything short of rabid enthusiasm on their part meant you'd be a nuisance. Where had I gotten the idea that being a nuisance was that big a deal? Sometimes now I think of all the opportunities I didn't take - to get a manicure in town, to watch television in another dorm, to go outside for a snowball fight - and of how refusal became a habit for me, and then I felt it would be conspicuous if I ever did join in.

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About Curtis Sittenfeld

Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld (born August 23, 1975) is an American writer. She is the author of a collection of short stories, You Think it, I’ll Say It (2018), as well as seven novels: Prep (2005), the story of students at a Massachusetts prep school; The Man of My Dreams (2006), a coming-of-age novel and an examination of romantic love; American Wife (2008), a fictional story loosely based on the life of First Lady Laura Bush; Sisterland (2013), which tells the story of identical twins with psychic powers; Eligible (2016), a modern-day retelling of Pride and Prejudice; Rodham (2020), an alternate history political novel about the life of Hillary Clinton; and Romantic Comedy (2023), a romance between a comedy writer and a pop star.