Andrea Seigel Quotes

There's nothing essentially romantic about things like roses or jewelry. Romance starts as some blank concept, and then you just fill it in with objects so you have something to point to when you want to make it real.

— Andrea Seigel

You don't ever know how happy you are until you remember how sad you once were and vice versa. Nothing is anything until I decide to hold nothing next to something, and declare that I see a difference.

— Andrea Seigel

“I didn't like that look, and I didn't want it. But you can't just tell someone to knock off her look because she'll only give you another. And if you happen to raise your voice too much while asking her to stop looking, she'll hurry off to tell a friend about your behavior the second you walk out of earshot. And then that friend will come find you under some kind of pretense, wanting to decipher what's up your ass today.”

— Andrea Seigel

And the sad happiness said, You know precisely when you're going to finish.

— Andrea Seigel

“Are you in pain?' I asked, because I know that everything in the world that matters shows up as some kind of pain. Or pang. Joy included.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I understand how hard it is to force yourself to be someone different. By the end of high school, I had taken to doing my math homework up against a concealed wall during lunch because I was tired of socializing.”

— Andrea Seigel

“Because teenagers don't have adult responsibilities yet, you can create your own drama, and it's a universe of your own emotions.”

— Andrea Seigel

“From the first Lauren Luke tutorial I watched, I was completely taken with her.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I advise all my novel students to write in the company of 'Veronica Mars.'”

— Andrea Seigel

“I can be like that: forgetting how hard it was to do something after I'm past it.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I have next to no interest in makeup as a thing in and of itself, and nothing stresses me out like Sephora's salespeople.”

— Andrea Seigel

I was an anxious kid. I worried about getting homework finished, even back when homework didn't count for anything.

— Andrea Seigel

“I've dreamed of having my French bulldog become a bestselling children's heroine.”

— Andrea Seigel

Irvine, being a planned community, is really good shorthand, especially in a movie or book, for understanding suburban pressures.

— Andrea Seigel

“Try to remember that decisions are made by individual, fallible personalities, not gods. It's hard. I know.”

— Andrea Seigel

“Allowing alternative narrative modes in popular entertainment may seem obvious, yet when you turn a pilot into the people upstairs and the main character isn't after what she wants by the top of page two, you get treated as if you've failed at writing.”

— Andrea Seigel

“As a kid, I was only allowed to watch a certain amount of television. But once I was old enough to own my own TV, I would stay up until 4:00 A.M. watching Home Shopping Network night after night. Soft-spoken women talked about the jewelry in very detailed, intricate, precious ways, and I loved it.”

— Andrea Seigel

“As evidenced during my failed audition, I'm a thorough introvert who would completely hate living in a 'Real World' house. I would have taken my Ikea comforter to the confessional room and never come out.”

— Andrea Seigel

“For me, one of the most beautiful and rewarding aspects of serial reality TV is that characters can move freely along a spectrum of heroism and villainy.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I do not believe that I will ever write an adult novel from an animal's point of view unless someday it becomes suddenly appealing to me to make a narrator a mentally ill pet. Never say never.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I lean toward anything with a dark sense of humor. And since I've been out of school, the majority of my books have been contemporary; basically, I like my characters to have electricity - even better, a TV.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I think a conceptual idea comes to me first - something I've been mulling over a lot right before I feel like writing a book - and then the characters start to develop around it.”

— Andrea Seigel

I was 11 years old when I saw the first season of 'The Real World.' Initially, I was drawn to the show because it was what I imagined the adult version of my life should be.

— Andrea Seigel

“I watched the first episode of 'Survivor' in the spring of 2000, thinking I would hate it. My natural inclination steers me toward the indoors not only in my actual life but also in the settings of the entertainment I read and watch.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I'd go to the library so I could sit in a big, quiet room and listen to pages being turned. There was a boring librarian who everyone in fifth grade hated. But I loved her because when she would read us stories in her soft voice, she'd turn my head into a snow globe.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I'm definitely very interested in doing female narrators that aren't typically feminine or emotional or soft - especially teenage girls - because I have such a hard time relating to so many of them that I read. They feel psychologically cuter to me than I ever was.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I've never read any of the '50 Shades of Grey' books because the Internet pre-educated me about the 'my inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves' material.”

— Andrea Seigel

“If there is one thing for which the 'Real Housewives' franchise deserves artistic recognition, it is the patient and immaculate building of a villain.”

— Andrea Seigel

Irvine is such a safe, stable, planned community, and I'm a person who has a lot of inner longing for drama and romance. So I think in some way the structure of Irvine made me more creative because I had these boundaries, and I thought outside them.

— Andrea Seigel

“Louis CK knows that just because a joke is using space as a resource instead of something to be crammed like a hamper, this doesn't mean a story isn't happening.”

— Andrea Seigel

“My feeling for reality TV isn't ironic, guilty, or apologetic. Reality TV is one of the few remaining modes of popular entertainment in which characterization is permitted as plot.”

— Andrea Seigel

“Old-school viewers remain adamant that 'The Real World' has deteriorated, as if the original enterprise were some pristine experiment that got sullied as the conditions in the lab got sloppier.”

— Andrea Seigel

“'Real Housewives of New Jersey' has taught me more about the nature of a vacuum in space than any of the demonstrations in my high school AP physics textbook.”

— Andrea Seigel

The first time I ever heard professional actors delivering lines that I wrote was completely surreal and was just a gigantic moment in my life. It was just a little bit mind-blowing and completely strange to have something that had been on my computer being said out loud.

— Andrea Seigel

“The second book was probably the result of the relationship I was in at the time. We were only going to be compatible for a minute, and I think we both knew it. It's like how you can be a different person on vacation, but you know all along you're just visiting that mindset.”

— Andrea Seigel

“TV's not the problem, and I'm tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.”

— Andrea Seigel

“Ultimately, criticism that 'The Real World' has devolved into a lesser enterprise comes from the viewers who came of age alongside it, not the teens of the moment that MTV has always existed for.”

— Andrea Seigel

“Viewers make online requests to their favorite video-making whisperers to do the things that trigger their head tingles. Everyone's needs are different. It's like an interactive choose-your-own-adventure.”

— Andrea Seigel

What 'Survivor' is really about is the inescapability of your being yourself, even when you have told yourself you can be someone different for 30 days.

— Andrea Seigel

“When I left for college, I told myself that this was a chance for reinvention. No one on the other side of the country knew that I was an introvert, so maybe if I tried not acting like an introvert, I wouldn't be one.”

— Andrea Seigel

“One of the many advantages of being a loner is that often there's time to think, ponder, brood, meditate deeply, and figure things out to one's satisfaction.”

— Andrea Seigel

“I've always believed that if you're truly in love with someone, you shouldn't be able to answer the question 'What do you love about him?' with any kind of real satisfaction.”

— Andrea Seigel