1
You never know the nature of another couple's marriage, do you?Curtis Sittenfeld
2
We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.Curtis Sittenfeld
3
Since I was a small girl, I have lived inside this cottage, shelted by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering– I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege allows, the way my own husband and now my daughter are blind. It is a statement of fact and not a judgement to say Charlie and Ella’s minds aren’t oriented in that direction; in a way, it absolves them, whereas the unlucky have knocked on the door of my consciousness, they have emerged from the forest and knocked many times over the course of my life, and I have only occasionally allowed them entry. I’ve done more than nothing and much less than I could have. I have laid inside, beneath a quilt on a comfortable couch, in a kind of reverie, and when I heard the unlucky outside my cottage, sometimes I passed them coins or scraps of food, and sometimes I ignored them altogether; if I ignored them, they had no choice but to walk back into the woods, and when they grew weak or got lost or were circled by wolves, I pretended I couldn’t hear them calling my name.Curtis Sittenfeld
4
I won’t claim I’ve never in my life done anything I’m ashamed of, but I haven’t done anything for a good while. If not everyone would agree with the decisions I’ve made, that’s fine. What other people think has never made a situation right or wrong.Curtis Sittenfeld
5
Foolish names and foolish faces often appear in public places.Curtis Sittenfeld