Claire Messud Quotes

I was in my senior year of high school when I read 'Notes From Underground' by Dostoyevsky, and it was an exhilarating discovery. I hadn't known up until that moment that fiction could be like that. Fiction could say these things, could be unseemly, could be unsettling and distressing in that particular way, that immediate and urgent way.

Claire Messud

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Quotes to Explore

• Every trick is an old one, but with a change of players, a change of dress, it comes out as new as before.

  

  Lady Gregory
  • Change
  • Old
  • Dress

• You have got to pay attention, you have got to study and you have to do your homework. You have to score higher than everybody else. Otherwise, there is always somebody there waiting to take your place.

  

  Daisy Fuentes
  • Attention
  • Study
  • Waiting

• How I wish we lived in a time when laws were not necessary to safeguard us from discrimination.

  

  Barbra Streisand
  • Time
  • Wish
  • Discrimination

• I have definitely worked on that... being efficient and also being smarter with my pressure.

  

  Daniel Cormier
  • Being
  • Pressure
  • Smarter

• The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.

  

  Oriana Fallaci
  • Up
  • Culture
  • Period

• I say the law should be blind to race, gender and sexual orientation, just as it claims to be blind to wealth and power. There should be no specially protected groups of any kind, except for children, the severely disabled and the elderly, whose physical frailty demands society's care.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Children
  • Power
  • Society

• I really wasn't even sure if I should continue acting. I would like try and figure out if I could be good enough to do it. It was like 10 or 12 years into my career before I felt like maybe I can do it. It was such a different time than now.

  

  Forest Whitaker
  • Time
  • Good
  • Different

• The things that have really gotten confusing to me is how you balance the desires of your publishers to produce things on a schedule, and people are always sort of giving you ideas on what you should follow up with or how you should proceed next and things like that.

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • People
  • Up
  • Giving

• The best time to release a film is on a festive date like Divali or Eid, or at a time when there are no big films three to four weeks before or after.

  

  Salman Khan
  • Time
  • Best
  • Three

• After the revolution, it might very well remain necessary to place people where they could not do harm to others. But the one under restraint should be cut off from the rest of society as little as possible.

  

  Barbara Deming
  • People
  • Society
  • Rest

• Obviously, for me, story is first and foremost, even in the face of the attractive idea of having all the cast there, or having a great piece of talent come to it.

  

  Vin Diesel
  • Story
  • Idea
  • Talent

• Growing up, my dolls were doctors and on secret missions. I had Barbie Goes Rambo.

  

  Zoe Saldana
  • Up
  • Growing
  • Growing Up

• People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • People
  • World
  • Character

• Oh the innocent girl in her maiden teens knows perfectly well what everything means.

  

  D. H. Lawrence
  • Girl
  • Knows
  • Innocent

• That's what I've wanted to do my whole life, just act. When I was younger, I loved to entertain people. I always used to make up dance routines, do little plays. I love to perform, basically.

  

  Cara Delevingne
  • People
  • Life
  • Younger

• I never sing in the shower either.

  

  Barbra Streisand
  • Never
  • Sing
  • Shower

• Now I've been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.

  

  Harriet Tubman
  • Free
  • Know
  • Slavery

• The future rewards those who press on. I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I'm going to press on.

  

  Barack Obama
  • Time
  • Future
  • Myself

• I'm a way bigger worrier than I ever was before I had kids. And, you know, the stress and anxiety that can go along with motherhood, I have had to battle that.

  

  Natalie Maines
  • Kids
  • Stress
  • Anxiety

• I want to promote the introduction of art history in primary schools and to convince the general public that, even in a period of economic crisis, arts funding is an absolute necessity at the federal, state, and local levels.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Art
  • History
  • Period

• Russia is not our friend.

  

  Maxine Waters
  • Friend

• I had a ball doing Harry Potter.

  

  Fiona Shaw
  • Doing
  • Ball
  • Harry Potter

• When I played, I had a natural ability to jump and run, and I just wanted to get bigger and heavier.

  

  Brady Anderson
  • Jump

• I was in my senior year of high school when I read 'Notes From Underground' by Dostoyevsky, and it was an exhilarating discovery. I hadn't known up until that moment that fiction could be like that. Fiction could say these things, could be unseemly, could be unsettling and distressing in that particular way, that immediate and urgent way.

  

  Claire Messud
  • Up
  • School
  • High