Claire Messud Quotes
-
You can't make a character do something they wouldn't do.
-
If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.
-
I'm a big believer in the complex realities of young people's lives.
-
If you're rich, you can leave a library, a building, or a hospital wing. But writing leaves behind a visceral sense of what it was like to be alive on the planet in a particular time. Writing tells us what it meant for someone to be human.
-
I always say to my students, 'If you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.'
-
If I look at my make-up, Canada is a huge part of what I am.
-
Obstruction can be caused by so many factors - perfectionism, distraction, faltering confidence, external demands and pressures. At some point, of course, you've got to push through it all if you're to write, and if you don't, or can't, you're sunk.
-
I'm not a writing group member, not a joiner in that way. I don't seek a wide swath of feedback.
-
I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.
-
You lose something in not being rooted, but you gain something by seeing the world differently. It's both a loss and a gift.
-
The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.
-
What is the truth? Is it what you experience? Is it what I experience? Or is there some objective truth in between?