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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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 Henry Adams, I discovered not only the prototype of the modern thinker but also someone who is more interesting: a viper-toothed, puling, supercilious crank, thwarted in ambition, aging gracelessly, mad at the cosmos, and ashamed of his own jejune ideals. He is nevertheless very dear to me.
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I think self-love isn't some destination you get to and you are then incapable of feeling those feelings, but a journey in which you adapt your experiences to make for a happier life.
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Once you've achieved success, and you're making decisions that are working, I don't understand why anyone would be second-guessing themselves.
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I'm no hardened criminal who the authorities need to hunt.
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When it comes to poetry, I think partly the numbers of people attempting to write poems is probably a result or the reaction to technology.
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We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming-with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy-is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels.
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The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.
