Curtis Sittenfeld Quotes

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent… this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The characters have no magnitude and no meaning because they have no more reality than a mince-pie nightmare.

I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read.

There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot.

I honestly don't think Peter is that interesting without Harriet - the only exception being 'The Nine Tailors', which is such a good book it doesn't really matter whether he's got a consort or not.

What I am best at is reading a book and then writing a critical essay.

I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

I used to say, read as much as you can. Now I say, read the best that you can, the stories that resonate with you, the books that are important to you. Try to read, not only as a reader, but also as a writer, to deconstruct how the author is telling his or her story.

There are things I read doing research, and there are certain books and writers I just love to read. There are books of Brian Morten's that I love, for instance. There's a wonderful book by an Australian writer named Helen Garner called 'The Children's Bach,' and I just love the way she uses language in it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer. If I'm teaching a story by Hemingway, my endeavor is to present the story that Hemingway wrote in its fullest realization.

I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '

Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary.

Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things like: 'The poem's sardonic tone is curiously at odds with its plodding syntax.'

I don't know if I officially proofread my father's book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

Critics who do the weekly recap, I find that kind of absurd. That's like reviewing chapters in a novel.

The greatest texts, I think, first dazzle, then with careful rereading, they instruct. I have learned from Virginia Woolf more than I even know how to articulate.

Subject matter is sort of overemphasized in the way books get discussed, I think.

A good novelist pays attention to his characters. A good biographer pays attention to the documents before her. A good critic pays close attention to the thing she's brought to evaluate.

I find something very appealing about taking literature very literally.

It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.

In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.

A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.

The so-called paradoxes of an author, to which a reader takes exception, often exist not in the author's book at all, but rather in the reader's head.

I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.