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.

Claire Messud

• Home
• Father
• Sister

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Quotes to Explore

• 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.

  

  Adam Grant
  • Values
  • Emotions
  • Step

• I'm not an enormous proponent of plot as a reader. It's about other things; my reading has become specialized over the years.

  

  Patrick deWitt
  • Reading
  • Years
  • Become

• 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.

  

  Bassem Youssef
  • Up
  • World
  • Hope

• 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.

  

  Larry Brown
  • School
  • Kids
  • Worship

• Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Work
  • Way
  • Interesting

• 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.

  

  Samantha Bee
  • People
  • Why
  • Think

• 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.

  

  Wendell Berry
  • Heart
  • Night
  • Man

• 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.

  

  Nancy Gibbs
  • Power
  • Faith
  • Leader

• I can do whatever I want.

  

  Karl Lagerfeld
  • Want
  • I Can
  • Whatever

• 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.

  

  Sam Phillips
  • Good
  • Soul
  • Man

• 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.

  

  Barbara Olson
  • Think
  • Decision
  • Lying

• I love Japan, and Tokyo is my favorite city.

  

  Barry Eisler
  • Love
  • City
  • Tokyo

• Bears are very nice, as long as you are nice to them.

  

  Karl Lagerfeld
  • Long
  • You
  • Nice

• I curate my T.V.-watching quite carefully.

  

  Gaby Hoffmann
  • Quite
  • Carefully
  • Curate

• 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.

  

  Kate Bush
  • Up
  • School
  • Parents

• Part of what's so tricky in a film that's two hours long is how many themes can you effectively explore.

  

  Gavin Hood
  • Long
  • You
  • Film

• 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.

  

  Zakk Wylde Black Label Society
  • Done
  • She
  • Bad

• 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.

  

  Adam McKay
  • Up
  • House
  • Religious

• If I deny myself something, I just get resentful, so what's the point?

  

  Vanessa Marcil
  • Myself
  • Something
  • Point

• I look stupid without a mustache.

  

  Erik Griffin
  • Stupid
  • Mustache

• I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care.

  

  Philip Roth
  • Work

• After my mother and father separated when I was 5, my mother moved to Washington, D.C., and my father remained in North Carolina. Later, I moved to New York and would often drive down to D.C. to see her. We'd ride around together talking and listening to music.

  

  Brian Tyree Henry
  • Music
  • Together
  • Mother

• Nothing - and, I repeat, nothing - can affect what you build with sheer hard work. You either wait for people to define your worth or you define it with your own actions. I believe in the latter.

  

  Mawra Hocane
  • People
  • Work
  • Believe

• 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.

  

  Claire Messud
  • Home
  • Father
  • Sister