Curtis Sittenfeld Quotes

This was not a good idea coming home for Christmas. I'm too old. Years ago, coming back from schools or trips, I always expected some sort of new perspective or fresh insight about the family on returning. That doesn't happen anymore-the days of revelation about my parents, at least, are over... its time to move on. I think we'd all appreciate that.

Once we reach a certain age, we tend to recalibrate our expectations. We expect less from the world once we've seen it up close.

When I was 40, I used to wonder what people thought of me. Now I wonder what I think of them.

People who behave at forty as they did at twenty must sometimes wonder why their charm is not working.

I made my excuses and left, thinking, really, after a certain age, people are just going to do what they're going to do and you're either going to accept them as they are or you're not.

Most of us are taught from an early age to pay far more attention to signals coming from other people than from within. We are encouraged to ignore our own needs and wants and to concentrate on living up to others expectations.

I like Dr. Daniel Amen's 18/40/60 Rule: When you're 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you're 40, you don't give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you're 60, you realize nobody's been thinking about you at all.

The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.

Let the thick curtain fall;I better know than allHow little I have gained,How vast the unattained.

To tell you the truth, the older I get, the less I know. I keep meeting people, both older and younger, who seem to have accrued so much more knowledge or expertise or certainty about who they are and the jobs they do. I just marvel at it.

AMANDA: I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives.

That’s the big challenge of life—to chisel disappointment into wisdom so people respect you and you don’t annoy your friends with your whining.

Now, more than ever, I realize just how illusory my undeserved success has been. I still hold out some hope of doing better, but age and unhappiness have sapped my strength.

I was wiser at 30 than I am now. My judgment was better at 12. If you look out the windshield of a Hyundai or a Bentley, you see the same road.

But in my heart I knew the old Bryce was toast. There was no going back. Not to Garrett or Shelly or Miranda or any of the other people who wouldn't understand. Juli was different, but after all these years that didn't bother me anymore. I liked it. I liked her.

Success is all about being able to extend love to people. The people I consider successful are so because of how they handle their responsibilities to other people, how they approach the future, people who have a full sense of the value of their life and what they want to do with it.

I got tired of doing battle with people thinking I was a little weird because I wasn't in a band making happy, stilted music. The only people who really seem weird to me are people who think they're normal. People who think it's possible to be normal just by doing the same things that most people do. Is there a most people? I don't know. Television makes it seem like there is, but I think that might just be television.

Most people believe that aging is normal but nobody defines what normal aging is.

Welcome to adulthood." Cob said. "Every child finds a day when the realize that adults can be weak and wrong just like everyone else. After that day, you are an adult. Like it or not.

I'm thankful for some of bad experiences I've had. They helped me with the way I view people and see them for who they really are.

You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.

I've learned not to be surprised by what people do no more.

I was always fascinated by people who are considered completely normal, because I find them the weirdest of all

What I've lost in years I've gained in wisdom. Bullshit, I haven't learnt one thing in the last 15 years that hasn't just depressed me more.

It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.