Claire Messud Quotes
The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.
Quotes to Explore
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I don't keep people around me that aren't family. You don't get to stay. Unless you're eating at the table with us, you're not part. We eat together, we cry together, we live together, we die together. Everything that we do is for each other, and we care for another.
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I joined a radical group at the age of 16 because I'm a passionate man; the good news is that I turned myself around since then. But my character is still quite free and passionate.
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The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.
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It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say 'I' into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.
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People think of you differently if you've been in their homes. They think they own you because they watched you while they were eating dinner, or they can turn you up or down, or even freeze you.
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I'm really about my family and really proud of being a Carter.
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Clearly I am a very strong, top-of-the-line, always-rising-to-it personage.
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I'm a little angry in life.
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The essence of science is independent thinking, hard work, and not equipment. When I got my Nobel Prize, I had spent hardly 200 rupees on my equipment.
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There's a hardening of the culture. Reality TV has lowered the standards of entertainment. You're left wondering about the legitimacy of relationships. It's probably harder to entertain the same people with a more classic form of writing, and romantic comedies are a classic genre.
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Brooklyn's good. Brooklyn's funky. Brooklyn's happening.
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In the early '90s, I was hired to write educational dramas about HIV and AIDS in the shantytowns. I did that for two and a half years, and then I was hired on other films. When 'Tsotsi' presented itself, I thought, 'This is not a world I grew up in, but I've spent a great deal of time writing about it and researching it in my past.'
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I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four.
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I used to be able to think. My brain's circuits were all connected, and I had spark, a quickness of mind that let me function well in the world.
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Every action is seen to fall into one of three main categories, guarding, hitting, or moving. Here, then, are the elements of combat, whether in war or pugilism.
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You can talk good ideas out of existence.
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In all these years, I've understood one thing: that it's only your work that should do all the talking.
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I don't think anyone's particularly conscious of thinking suits are the thing, but when you see a comedian on stage in jeans and a t-shirt it doesn't matter how good they are - it always looks like amateur hour when they walk onto the stage.
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In thinking about it, the villains often have a little bit more range because their morality is different. You can have just a really good time as an actor, and there is just more there that you can explore on that side of the story.
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We're all entitled to opinions about how art institutions should behave, and entitled to voicing those opinions through whatever means available to us. We're also allowed to change or modify our opinions.
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I'm incapable of truly relaxing. I remember when I was younger and less wise or experienced, actors that I knew would always talk about jobs ending and wondering whether they were ever going to work again. Now that's my life.
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I felt different at 29 because 29, to me, is 30. There are times when I still feel like an actual toddler in a grown-up - well, semi-grown-up - body.
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The nations which have received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered, and the nations that have tortured and oppressed him have written out their own curse.
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The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.
