Claire Messud Quotes
I liked the idea of being from 'somewhere else.' I do think that's inherited. My father never had a fixed sense of where home was, and for my sister and me, it is much easier not to belong than to belong.

Quotes to Explore
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Leaders who master emotions can rob us of our capacities to reason. If their values are out of step with our own, the results can be devastating.
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I'm not an enormous proponent of plot as a reader. It's about other things; my reading has become specialized over the years.
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What I hope to do in the States is to break up this stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs. I mean, we are basically the only sub-culture that is not represented in Hollywood. And it's funny because everybody is talking about the Muslim world and the Arab world, and we are not represented.
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Look at how many North Carolina kids have played for me or tried out for me or coached with me. I've had Dennis Wuycik, Steve Previs, Billy Chamberlain, Donald Washington, Darrell Elston, Tommy LaGarde, Bobby Jones. You name it, I've had them. Whatever Coach has ever asked me to do, I've done. Because I love the school, and I worship him.
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Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work.
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I continue to be very shy. I think a lot of actors and performers are really weird, shy people working it out onstage. I don't know why that is.
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I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever. Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.
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We've seen what happens when it serves a president's interest to flaunt his faith - which is almost inevitably does, since every poll affirms that Americans want their leader to submit to some higher power.
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I can do whatever I want.
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I was looking for what was coming from a man's soul and a man's conviction. I didn't care about his past. If it was innate and natural and felt good to him and it communicated.
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The decision that has to be made was whether it was material, whether he knew he was lying under oath, whether he did it willfully. I think that's required of any prosecutor who is charged with an investigation of this.
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I love Japan, and Tokyo is my favorite city.
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Bears are very nice, as long as you are nice to them.
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I curate my T.V.-watching quite carefully.
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My parents weren't keen on the giving up of school at the beginning to go into singing and dancing, but once they saw I was serious about it, they gave support. I was quite stubborn about my decision, and in the end, they realised it was for the best.
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Part of what's so tricky in a film that's two hours long is how many themes can you effectively explore.
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One day my wife went and saw the accountant and said she's pulling the plug. She said you guys are done. I said, how bad can it be? 10 grand? She said you're not even close. It came out to almost $50,000 in alcohol for two months.
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The corporate right fires up the religious right against gay marriage and abortion and uses their votes to push their deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. It's an old trick. The House of Saud has the same arrangement with the Mullahs in Saudi Arabia.
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I was always the funny-looking girl. I couldn't compete with the Brazilian girls. My nose is off, my ears are too big. But I think it's my personality that these designers were drawn to.
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James Cain was saddled with being called the father of hardboiled fiction. Apparently, he didn't like this saddle.
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When I was younger, my father was in the Foreign Service and we lived in Nigeria, Panama, and London, but for the most part I grew up in the South and D.C. I got the travel bug as a little person and I've bounced around a lot.
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The Will Smith that you see in movies is exactly the same as Will Smith in real life. Except for when he plays a superhero, because the real Will Smith can't fly. He can only hover.
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My boyfriend dumped me. My best friend won't talk to me. My future is in a garbage can. Everything has turned to crap. Can you please just let me be a sullen teenager. just this once
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I liked the idea of being from 'somewhere else.' I do think that's inherited. My father never had a fixed sense of where home was, and for my sister and me, it is much easier not to belong than to belong.