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

• 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

• In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants.

  

  John Boyd Orr
  • World
  • Earth

• 'I didn’t create poverty. This church didn’t create poverty. Poverty is not an issue, human suffering is not an issue at all, they were there before the creation of mankind.'

  

  Peter Akinola
  • Church
  • Suffering
  • Poverty

• Donald Trump is Hillary Clinton’s Christmas gift wrapped up under a tree. I am the lump of coal in her stocking.

  

  Carly Fiorina
  • Up
  • Trump
  • Tree

• My truck is my personality. I'm an energy guy. I'm not much of an introvert.

  

  Aaron Rowand
  • Energy
  • Personality
  • Introvert

• 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