Claire Messud Quotes

If you're rich, you can leave a library, a building, or a hospital wing. But writing leaves behind a visceral sense of what it was like to be alive on the planet in a particular time. Writing tells us what it meant for someone to be human.

Claire Messud

• Time
• Writing
• Library

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Quotes to Explore

• I started composting in 1970 by taking my food scraps out behind where I lived and burying them in a hole next to the railroad tracks - and green things started to grow there!

  

  Ed Begley, Jr.
  • Food
  • Green
  • Grow

• Power is not of a man. Wealth does not center in the person of the wealthy. Celebrity is not inherent in any personality. To be celebrated, to be wealthy, to have power requires access to major institutions.

  

  C. Wright Mills
  • Power
  • Man
  • Personality

• One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • People
  • Past
  • Should

• It takes me a long time writing books. It takes me about five years to write a book, and when I'm done, the last thing I want to do is to do it again.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • Time
  • Long
  • Writing

• I read a lot of comic books and any kind of thing I could find. One day, a teacher found me. She grabbed my comic book and tore it up. I was really upset, but then she brought in a pile of books from her own library. That was the best thing that ever happened to me.

  

  Walter Dean Myers
  • Up
  • She
  • Book

• Our enemies can deal a blow to us any time they wish. They did not wait for permission to do this. They do not deal a blow with prior notice. They do not take action because they can't.

  

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
  • Time
  • Action
  • Wish

• My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

  

  Eddie Izzard
  • People
  • Up
  • Time

• My films are about ideals that clash with the world. Every time it's a man in the lead, they have forgotten about the ideals. And every time it's a woman in the lead, they take the ideals all the way.

  

  Lars von Trier
  • Time
  • World
  • Man

• I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

  

  E. O. Wilson
  • Writing
  • Mind
  • Career

• The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.

  

  Gary Zukav
  • Time
  • Future
  • Pain

• I shall, in due time, be a Poet.

  

  Ada Lovelace
  • Time
  • Poet
  • Shall

• Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn't have much to say about how they'd make it right. They want your vote, but they don't want you to know their plan.

  

  Barack Obama
  • Friends
  • America
  • Happy

• I think as a child you know when it's time for your parents to split. You realise they love each other, but they're not in love with each other. And I think as a child it's much better for your parents to split than for them to stay and have dysfunction within the family.

  

  Abbie Cornish
  • Time
  • Family
  • Love

• I was brought up in a house full of women; the first time I realised no one was interrupting me was when I was on stage - that's probably the subconscious reason I became an actor.

  

  Eddie Marsan
  • Up
  • Time
  • Women

• The year that 'Lost' started and premiered was, without a doubt, the most miserable year of my life. The level of despair and anguish that I was feeling; I was clinically depressed, and anyone that you talked to who knew me at the time will tell you that.

  

  Damon Lindelof
  • Life
  • Time
  • Feeling

• Before you act, consider; when you have considered, tis fully time to act.

  

  Sallust
  • Time
  • You
  • Act

• Storytelling is storytelling. Good stories need compelling characters and interesting conflicts. That's the bottom line no matter what medium you're writing for.

  

  D. J. MacHale
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Interesting

• I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

  

  Gavin Bryars
  • Writing
  • Composer
  • Satisfying

• We've been back since July, but I spent some time with the family in the south of France over the summer. We rented a house with another couple and took it easy.

  

  Laura Innes
  • Time
  • Family
  • House

• I'm on it pretty much all the time. I edit Wikipedia every day, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I'm reading the news. During one of the US elections, I actually went through my computer and I blocked myself from looking at the major newspaper sites and Google News because I wasn't getting any work done.

  

  Jimmy Wales
  • Time
  • Work
  • Done

• I prefer more spicy food to your Italian to be fair.

  

  Peter Shilton
  • Food
  • Italian

• From the beginning of Queen there was such momentum that I never had any time to do anything else. My energy was 95% focused on the band.

  

  Brian May Queen
  • Time
  • Energy
  • Band

• Most people are fascinated by what I did as a teenager, but when I look back at my life, I don't think very much about those years. I was an opportunist and got away with things because I was very young, but I went to prison and came out and remade my life.

  

  Frank Abagnale
  • People
  • Life
  • Teenager

• If you're rich, you can leave a library, a building, or a hospital wing. But writing leaves behind a visceral sense of what it was like to be alive on the planet in a particular time. Writing tells us what it meant for someone to be human.

  

  Claire Messud
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Library