Curtis Sittenfeld

A Novel

Romantic Comedy

Lindsey Barnett

Aren't we all just looking for someone to talk about everything with? Someone worth the effort of telling our stories and opinions to, whose stories and opinions we actually want to hear?

Helen 

Back in the live room, he picked up an acoustic guitar and tuned it and then, while looking at me, began playing a song I soon recognized as “Revolution" by the Beatles. He kept playing as we talked about something else, and I felt a tidal wave in my stomach, this reminder of the thing he could do exceptionally well and easily and the strange preciousness of his doing it when no one was around except me.

“I’m very happy to give you affirmation," he said. "I want to give you affirmation. But if I don't give you enough, you should ask for it."

"Isn't asking for affirmation-I don't know-needy?"

 He looked perplexed. "Isn't the point of something like this that the other person tries to meet your needs, and you try to meet theirs?”

Wasn't this more than I'd ever imagined I could wish for, that a kind, thoughtful, smoking-hot man would think I was terrifyingly, awesomely perceptive? That he understood how neurotic I was, and didn't seem to mind? That he saw neediness not as annoying but as normal? 

 And I can't believe that we met and I get to be the person who's eating dinner with you and hiking with you and being naked with you. For that matter, that I'm the person who just looks up and there you ar in the same room with me, and, yes, you are smoking hot. And how unique and incredible you are does make me kind of karmically or existentially terrified. Because how could anyone deserve you, let alone me? But I’m also really grateful  because I alwavs wanted to feel disbelief at my own luck. 

Katy Schwarz

"If it sounds like I haven't been in enough therapy, it's because I've chosen Midwestern repression instead."

From Viv: What if there was chemistry but only for me 

From me: Pretty sure that's not how chemistry works

Syrina

I wondered then if there was a loneliness to loving a very talented person because their talent was only of them, not of both of you.

Isn’t the goal to live with our demons, not expect them to go away

You know the advice about how you should always play tennis with people better than you? When I'm talking to you, I'm a funnier and smarter version of myself because you're funny and smart

Romantic Comedy quotes

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