Sisterland Quotes

“We all make mistakes, don't we? But if you can't forgive yourself, you'll always be an exile in your own life.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“Children are nothing but a problem people create and then congratulate themselves on solving.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“Maybe my homesickness was a form of prescience because when I look back, it's the circumstances of this very car ride that I recognize as irretrievable: the experience of driving nowhere in particular with my sister, both of us seventeen years old, the open windows causing our hair to blow wildly; that feeling of being unencumbered; that confidence that our futures would inform the way we wanted them to and our real lives were just beginning.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“My own preferences had little bearing on the outcome of events.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“She would say that we create our own reality-that the truth, ultimately, is what we choose to believe.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“There are, I have learned, so many gifts of motherhood, and so many sadnesses, and one of the sadnesses is the asymmetry of the family experience: that in spite of all the daily nuisances, and in spite of the unforgivable way I transgressed, these years of the children being little are the sweetest time in my life. And yet, for Rosie and Owen and Gabe, these won’t be their best years. They’ll grow up and go away, they’ll find spouses and have sons or daughters, and no matter how much we loved them, they’ll probably recall their childhoods as strange and confusing, as all childhoods are. The happiest time in their lives, if they’re lucky, will be when they’re raising their own families.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“Maybe I have always been, as Vi would subsequently accuse me, someone who creates obstacles for myself than looks around in surprise, wondering where they came from.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“Our windows were open, and the radio had been playing continuously--not one but two Billy Joel songs had come on during our drive--and the air was dense with the humidity of a midwestern summer, weather that even then made me homesick, though it was hard to say for what. Maybe my homesickness was a form of prescience because when I look back, it's the circumstances of this very car ride that I recognize as irretrievable: the experience of driving nowhere in particular with my sister, both of us seventeen years old, the open windows causing our hair to blow wildly; that feeling of being unencumbered; that confidence that our futures would unfold the way we wanted them to and our real lives were just beginning.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“I want to open myself up, I want to experience other dimensions, I don’t want to be bound by the rules of this world. Does that make me a freak?”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“By the time we’d made it across the mall, up the elevator, and into the store, and Vi had dawdled in the way of the childless as she considered whether our father would prefer a shower radio or velour slippers, it was after four.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“There had been certain things I’d wanted badly in my childhood, and instead of getting them, I’d grown up; I did not want them any longer.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“we create our own reality—that the truth, ultimately, is what we choose to believe.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland

“Rudolph Walsh, you are my fierce advocate, and your wit and wisdom”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland