Claire Messud Quotes

Grid View List View
Quote of the Day Picture Quotes Top 100 Inspirational Quotes Top 100 Love Quotes Top 100 Happiness Quotes
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Edgar Allan Poe Pope Francis John F. Kennedy W. Edwards Deming Michael Jordan Kanye West John Keats Martin Luther H. L. Mencken
Heartbreak Christmas Wisdom Food Truth Beauty Society Thank You Family Mom
  • Novelist
  • born 1966
  • 131 quotes

Claire Messud, a novelist (born 1966), is quoted 131 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are Writing, World, Reading and Canada.

Quotes with a ready-made image come first, then the rest in order of how often they are read and shared. Open any quote to copy it, share it, or turn it into a picture quote.

I don't trust people who are likable.

Geniuses have the shortest biographies.

I wish I were a really good photographer.

But we're lost in a world of appearances now.

We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

I'd wish for my work to be remembered rather than myself.

If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.

If I look at my make-up, Canada is a huge part of what I am.

We're all living in some state of illusion, even if modestly.

I had a memory span about as long as the lines in a school play.

As a reader since very early, I have found myself drawn to rants.

Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world.

I'm a big believer in the complex realities of young people's lives.

I'll always find the hardest path. Needless to say, not always a good idea.

Rushing around can be a pointless diversion from actually living your life.

Awards bolster your confidence in wonderful ways. But they aren't the world.

I was someone who believed that every day should be different from the last.

I feel as though there's a lot invested in my background in being an outsider.

If you took my reading and writing out of my head, I don't know who I would be.

To be weighed down by things - books, furniture - seems somehow terrible to me.

Women aren't supposed to want stuff. They're not supposed to have high emotions.

I grew up on British fiction, and I write perhaps more directly out of that tradition.

That's so her. You know, torn between Big Ideas and a party. She's always been that way.

Maybe that, really, is as good a definition as any of an artist in the world: a ruthless person.

I’m not a writing group member, not a joiner in that way. I don’t seek a wide swath of feedback.

I'm not a writing group member, not a joiner in that way. I don't seek a wide swath of feedback.

The relevant question isn't, 'Is this a potential friend for me?' but, 'Is this character alive?'

The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.

I have said it somewhere - our literary lived lives are as important as our literally lived lives.

At university, my generation were ready to fight, but we didn't really have anything to fight for.

To my mind, Guernica is the most important online intellectual and literary journal in America today.

I always say to my students, if you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.

There are people who live under the delusion that simply because they will it to be so, it will be so.

I always say to my students, 'If you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.'

I'm a different person in French. I'm a different person in New York. I'm a different person in Canada.

For me, it was a formative experience reading Eliot when I was younger. 'The Waste Land,' in particular.

For me, the watershed was Hurricane Katrina. If that didn't get people out on the streets, then what will?

The fictional narratives that television, film, and the news provide for girls and young women are appalling.

If it's unseemly and possibly dangerous for a man to be angry, it's totally unacceptable for a woman to be angry.

I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.

What is the truth? Is it what you experience? Is it what I experience? Or is there some objective truth in between?

I've always felt that if a project seems easy, or even attainable, why pursue it? I'll always find the hardest path.

It's still unacceptable for women to have negative emotions, especially anger, and I was trying to write against that.

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.

You lose something in not being rooted, but you gain something by seeing the world differently. It's both a loss and a gift.

I've never been very practical or realistic - I've always felt that if a project seems easy, or even attainable, why pursue it?

I love my books, and with all their dog-ears and under-linings they are irreplaceable, but I sometimes wish they'd just vanish.

In making up stories, as in reading stories, I could create a contained world in which an experience is shared in its entirety.

Especially since having children, a lot of the time if you ask me, 'Have you read that book?' the answer would be 'not personally.'

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.

Claire Messud is quoted on

Share This Page