Claire Messud Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says, 'Don't worry - everything will be just fine,' and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.
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If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive.
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I'm someone who wears their heart on their sleeve.
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Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.
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Most of Google's home technologies have failed to catch on in a major way.
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What makes me happy is the appreciation of people around me.
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I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.
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I never went to fashion school. I didn't know what a designer was. I knew I had something, but I didn't know what it was. And it could just have easily been nothing.
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I believe that I'm a hillbilly in my values and in my attitudes, and I don't want to lose that. I think it's possible to maintain a big chunk of that identity so long as you're self-reflective and meaningful about it.
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I've always had great faith in the Man Upstairs.
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I started off singing in church as a child. The sound of voices coming together, that was my first moment of touching something outside of myself.
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A true heiress is never mean to anyone - except a girl who steals your boyfriend.
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So it's joyful to me, in my 71st year, to be able to be in a play that is absolutely right for my age and my experience, and that is a popular success. What more could you ask as an actor?
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Your subconscious's goal is to recreate unresolved childhood issues and then hopefully mend them.
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I used to get a shiver if I thought about holding balloons, because I was scared of floating away.
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I'll never get married again, and I always hate to say never to anything, but I will never marry again.
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How do you give smart, accomplished, ambitious women the same opportunities as men to reach their goals? What about universal preschool and after-school programs? What about changing the corporate mind-set about the time commitment it takes to move up the ladder? What about having more husbands step up and take the major load?
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My idea for 'BoneMan's Daughters' came from the loss of my own daughter when she left home to live with a monster at age 18. I wanted to throttle the man, but she was in love, so all I could do was hope, pray and cry.
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I vicariously lived the life of an independent producer from the time I was four years old. And what was always important was writing, writing, writing.
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Writing is frustration - it's daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It's just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time.
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The hardest thing writers have to do is figure out for themselves who they are. What should they be writing about? What stories should they be telling? What does writing mean to them? I didn't know the answers to those questions for a long, long time.
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I'm in hotel rooms most of the time, and it can be hard to find a hotel with a nice gym. It was important for me to have a workout I could do in my room.
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If you took my reading and writing out of my head, I don't know who I would be.
