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7b07597
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I'm old enough to know that sometimes you don't get a second chance.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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cbe1751
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if it's great reverence you're looking for, or earnest expressions of gratitude - well, then you don't work with kids.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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60a2abc
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Once I had asked, 'But are you a Democrat or a Republican?" and Jonathan said, "I'm socially progressive but fiscally conservative," and Doug Miles, a football player who also came to Sunday breakfast but only ever read the sports section and ignored everyone, lifted his head and said, "Is that like being bisexual?" Which I actually thought was funny, even though I was pretty sure Doug was a jerk."
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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75ce5f4
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it never comes down to a single thing you did or didn't do or say. You might convince yourself it did, but it didn't.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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1a5ea7c
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Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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4ea2115
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I noticed then that the red-haired woman was buying the food you eat when you live alone: a box of cereal, a few apples, a plastic container of plain yogurt....With an abrupt clarity, I saw how I had been launched into another category. I had been the red-haired woman; for a decade of my adult life, I had bought cereal and yogurt, I'd stood near couples and watched them nuzzle, and now I was part of such a couple. And I would not be launche..
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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2c11c9e
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You give too much attention to things that make you unhappy,' Allison says. No doubt she is right. And yet attending to things that make Hannah unhappy--it's such a natural reflex. It feels so intrinsic, it feels in some ways like who she is. The unflattering observations she makes about other people, the comments that get her in trouble, aren't these truer than small talk and thank-you notes? Worse, but truer. And underneath all the decoru..
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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9fbc517
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After I'd told her - the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair - she said, 'Did he kiss you?' 'John and Martin totally would have seen that,' I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people - for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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122c5a5
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And it wasn't that you couldn't be friends with a married woman, but you weren't friends in the same way, she didn't have the same freedom i her schedule, especially not after she had children, and even before that, she didn't need you; you needed friendship, and friendship to her was auxiliary, extra.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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9ba31f5
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She nodded, jotting something in her notebook. You're writing that down? Has the interview started?" Lee, whenever you're talking to a reporter, you're being interviewed."
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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a03c7b1
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To be a person who sees a political ad on television and takes the statements in it as fact, how can you exist in this world? How is it you're not robbed daily by charlatans who knock at your door?
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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2a82ae2
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You don't make waves unless there's a reason, and it better be good. Because once you do, that's it. You're a trouble make, and they never think of you any other way.
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trouble-maker
waves
revelation
power
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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b83482b
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Such compliments--they were thrilling but almost impossible to absorb in this quantity, at this pace. It was like she was being pelted with magnificent hail, and she wished she could save the individual stones to examine later, but they'd exist with such potency only now, in this moment.
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love
hail
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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ed79868
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Being called baby: like safaris and bowling leagues, a phenomenon she never thought she'd experience first hand.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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27ae9ca
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Liz felt the loneliness of confiding something true in a person who didn't care.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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1ae4703
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As they sat, Kathy de Bourgh smiled and said, "Now that we've both apologized within the first thirty seconds of our conversation about women and power, shall we begin?"
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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86ea19e
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Was this what marriage was, the slow process of getting to know another individual far better than was advisable? Sometimes [his] gestures and inflections were so mercilessly familiar that it was as if he were an extension of me, an element of my own personality over which I had little control.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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bdb1ca5
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I'm not a Democrat because I haven't thought about the issues. I'm a Democrat because I have.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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77c4d40
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you know what her punishment is for tormenting you way back when?" he said. I looked at him. He said, "her punishment is being her,"
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past-and-present
growing-up
punishment
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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77d9220
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Hannah is missing school because one night, her father exiled her and her mother and Allison from the house. This was, obviously, somewhat insane. But it wasn't more insane or cruel than other things he's done, which is not to say he's insane or cruel all the time. He's himself; he can be perfectly pleasant; he's the weather system they live with , and all the behavior, whenever he is around, hinges on his mood. Don't the three of them unde..
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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5bfdc8f
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When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times. --Mark Twain
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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dc841c3
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When I was in junior high, I used to think I would turn out to be one of the guys, and boys would say, 'Oh, you're so great,' but they wouldn't date me. I thought I wasn't pretty enough. But then I got to Ault and first of all, I'm not really friends with any guys. And then, with you this year, I thought, if Cross will keep hooking up with me, maybe I'm okay after all. But time passed and I never became your girlfriend. And so then I though..
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unhappiness
looks
love
yearning
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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80cf9da
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I couldn't tell them about Cross, I thought. I couldn't tell them because Dede liked him and because she wouldn't believe or understand it, and I couldn't tell them because I myself was unsure what there was to believe or understand. It wasn't like he'd kissed me, or made any declarations. What could I claim? For years and years, I felt this way, not just about Cross but about other guys - if they didn't kiss you, it didn't mean anything. T..
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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26443fb
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After all, these were not topics you could discuss with someone else; what was there to say to another person about how it felt? You could concoct things you wanted but in certain moments the light shifted or time slowed - on Sundays in particular, time slowed, and occasionally on Saturday afternoons, if you didn't have a game - and you saw that it was all really nothing. It was just endlessness and what you got or didn't get would hardly m..
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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72ad892
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Far in the future, Hannah will have a boyfriend named Mike with whom she'll talk about her father. She'll say she isn't sorry about her upbringing before the divorce, that she thinks in a lot of ways it was useful. Being raised in an unstable household makes you understand that the world doesn't exist to accommodate you, which, in Hannah's observation, is something a lot of people struggle to understand well into adulthood. It makes you rea..
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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47d3227
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I decided that I wanted to say to Sin-Jun, I like your skirt. But sometimes speaking is so hard! It's like standing still, then sprinting. I kept rehearsing the sentence in my head, examining it for flaws.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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569a5ad
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I think my mother found her mother-in-law entertaining, and in a person who entertains us, there is much we forgive.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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8a11851
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I take it you don't believe in love at first sight." "Does anyone over the age of thirteen? Do you?" "I don't, no," Darcy said. "But I don't rule out for others what I haven't experienced firsthand."
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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e6ec037
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It's not that you're wrong. But when you say stuff like this, it makes life a lot less enjoyable.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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dbd0704
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When I think of Henry and Oliver and Mike, I feel as if they are three different models - templates, almost - and I wonder if they are the only three in the world: the man who is with you completely, the man who is with you but not with you, the man who will get as close to you as he can without ever becoming yours. It would be arrogant to claim no other dynamics exist just because I haven't experienced them, but I have to say that I can't ..
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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c01fc83
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I decided we should get married no more of this running-through-the-rain shit. We should live in the same place, sleep in the same bed at night, wake up together in the morning, and whenever there's a tornado, I can take care of you and watch Baseball at the same time.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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afe9965
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I'd think, One of the times she leaves will be the last time I see her. It destroyed me. I didn't want us to have a last time, and that was how I realized I'd fallen in love with you.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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c88a479
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In general, I have no desire to ever have another conversation about Hillary Clinton, to debate the role her gender played. I'm not sure I want to have any conversation about sexism. If someone doesn't see that gender played a huge role, why would I waste my time trying to convince them?
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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30e90d7
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There's a belief that to take care of someone else, or to let someone else take care of you-that both are inherently unfeminist. I don't agree. There's no shame in devoting yourself to another person, as long as he devotes himself to you in return.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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6ffb855
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Part of getting what you want is asking for it.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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89e7d8f
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My heart clutched - it was one of those moments when you feel time is a rug that's been yanked out from under you; everything around you has changed so gradually that it is only all at one you look up and realize how different your life has become.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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4c2148f
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A reality show isn't unlike the Nobel Peace Prize, then," Mr. Bennet said. "In that they both require nominations."
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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b594042
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All things being equal, why not be married to a rich man? (Somewhere, Hannah thinks, there must be a needlepoint pillow asking this very question in a cleverer way.)
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marriage
riches
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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30abb0f
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Well--" My mother paused, and her tone was reflective in that way that is inevitably sad, because the past is sad. "What I remember," she said, "is that you were always such a dear little girl."
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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0e05d81
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Liz and Willie were passing a miniature chateau--even in its modified version, it was seven or eight thousand square feet--and Liz said, "I guess I'm a Cincinnati opportunist. In New York, I play the wholesome-midwesterner card, but when I'm back here, I consider myself to be a chic outsider." Even before Willie replied, Liz felt the loneliness of having confided something true in a person who didn't care."
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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1453373
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By the time we met up again, she'd be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single square of lasagna in a sealed Tupperware container as opposed to a squalid kitchen with tomato sauce splattered on the counters. And I wouldn't have to be there while she got it in order.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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78e1391
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I bet things would be easier for you if you either realized you're not that weird or decided that being weird isn't bad.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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2866e94
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I think adults forget just how much faith teenagers can have in them, just how willing to believe that adults, by virtue of being adults, know absolute truths, or that absolute truths are even knowable.
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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383102c
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But I was living my life sideway. I did not act on what I wanted, I did not say the things I thought, and being so stifled and clamped all the time left me exhausted; no matter what I was doing, I was always imagining something else.
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life
anxiety
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Curtis Sittenfeld |