Claire Messud Quotes
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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.
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We're all living in some state of illusion, even if modestly.
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We are all unappealing. It is just a matter of how much we let people see it.
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I love my books, and with all their dog-ears and under-linings they are irreplaceable, but I sometimes wish they'd just vanish.
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In midlife, I feel that my tendency to acquire books is rather like someone smoking two packs a day: it's a terrible vice that I wish I could shuck.
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There's this moment when kids realize that they have power and that they can use it.
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The relevant question isn't, 'Is this a potential friend for me?' but, 'Is this character alive?'
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I'll always find the hardest path. Needless to say, not always a good idea.
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For me, it was a formative experience reading Eliot when I was younger. 'The Waste Land,' in particular.
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I believe that, in an ideal world, writers would feel free to write what matters to them without having to consider success, failure, the market, etc.
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If you're writing a thriller, and you don't make it compelling, then you've really not done your job. So it's easier for me not to set out with certain goals, and then I can't see them as unmet. It's like life generally: If I'm not aiming to be physically fit, then I'm not always thinking about being unfit.
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I'm a different person in French. I'm a different person in New York. I'm a different person in Canada.
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As a reader, I have always enjoyed 'ranty' books, but they are all written by men.
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Rushing around can be a pointless diversion from actually living your life.
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For me, the watershed was Hurricane Katrina. If that didn't get people out on the streets, then what will?
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I wish I were a really good photographer.
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If you live in a family or have five roommates, there's some sort of reality check, but when you live alone, there's a lot more leeway for your fantasy life to be more and more a part of your everyday life.
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I was someone who believed that every day should be different from the last.
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Especially since having children, a lot of the time if you ask me, 'Have you read that book?' the answer would be 'not personally.'
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Obama was the first president whose biography makes sense to me. He can walk into a room anywhere and find common ground with any person.
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I have always been interested in that relationship between what happens in our head and what happens in the world.
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Everybody's always living in fiction just as much as children, but the way our stories are faked is curtailed by all sorts of narratives we take into our own lives about what are the true narratives and what's not.
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I had a memory span about as long as the lines in a school play.
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In a globalised world, so many of us move around so much. You lose things, but you also gain things - or hope to gain them.