Curtis Sittenfeld Quotes

I don't really think about genre. I like to write books that I'd love to read myself.

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.

I used to read about people who'd say, 'I dream my books, and then I write them down.' And I was like, 'Oh, please.'

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I prefer writing originals.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.

I write characters and stories that move me, and I write from the heart.

I try to write the kind of books I like to read.

What I do is write, and I try to write as closely as I can into what I call 'the mystery.'

I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.

It's that drama that drives authors, you know.

I write what's given me to write.

I write what I'd like to read and just hope that, along the way, others might like to read them, too.

When I started writing fiction, I knew how good it was immediately.

What I'm trying to do is to write a story. If you take something from it, that's wonderful; if you don't, that's wonderful as well.

I was swimming in my swimming pool when 'The Secret Lovers' popped entire into my head. I got out, dried off, went upstairs, and finished the book in about 50 days.

I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.