Claire Messud

Carmiel Banasky, a writer like no other, is a talent to watch.

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

I wish I were a really good photographer.

— Claire Messud

“Maybe, instead, I’ll set the world on fire. I just might.”

— Claire Messud

We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

— Claire Messud

I remember laughing so hard as a kid.

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

“It's hard to grasp all the different things that are going on at one time, or that went on at one time.”

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

“Americans see everything too simply-a good guy, a bad guy, does he have a white hat or a black hat? But it's…

— Claire Messud

“He said that’s what family is for: the people who love you see you in the best light, as you want to…

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

“How angry am I? You don't want to know. Nobody wants to know about that.”

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

An abiding preoccupation for me is how much of our lives are invisible and unknown by other people, like the Chekhov story…

— Claire Messud

“I wish it hadn't happened; but what good does this do? I can wish it wouldn't happen again - but here too,…

— Claire Messud

“It's the strangest thing about being human: to know so much, to communicate so much, and yet always to fall so drastically…

— Claire Messud

“you wouldn’t want them to know that in your heart, you are proud, and maybe even haughty, and are riven by thoughts…

— Claire Messud

“MY MOTHER assures me that it happens to everyone, sooner or later, for reasons more or less identifiable; everyone loses a best…

— Claire Messud

I feel as though there are things that I'm trying to do - you know, capturing truthfully some aspect of human experience…

— Claire Messud

My tendencies are much more the Henry James thing, where we sit in silence at the table for three minutes, and our…

— Claire Messud

Life's funny. You have to find a way to keep going, to keep laughing, even after you realize that none of your…

— Claire Messud

I went around in my teens and early 20s thinking that life was a con trick. I had managed to grow up…

— Claire Messud

The apartment was entirely, was only, for her: a wall of books, both read and unread, all of them dear to her…

— Claire Messud

“Like a Zen master, she reduced to the essences: I do not need to walk around the Museum of Fine Arts; I…

— Claire Messud

“But we don’t really know anything at all, except how the story should go, and we make believe it’s our story, hoping…

— Claire Messud

“He didn't much like reading novels - he preferred history or philosophy - or poetry, although he could read only a little…

— Claire Messud

I was in my senior year of high school when I read 'Notes From Underground' by Dostoyevsky, and it was an exhilarating…

— Claire Messud

Nobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an…

— Claire Messud

“Live, my dear Nora. Satisfy your hunger. There's food all around you, you know.' 'What kind of food, I'd like to know?'…

— Claire Messud

“We’re the quiet woman at the end of the third-floor hallway, whose trash is always tidy, who smiles brightly in the stairwell…

— Claire Messud

“It was supposed to say “Great Artist” on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say “such a good…

— Claire Messud

“Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid. Not paranoid, exactly, but always alert…

— Claire Messud

“From anywhere: where once he had feared that this immense city would set him adrift, a spinning atom in the ether, and…

— Claire Messud

“Without it being said, I was treated as a kid with a bright future and Cassie, well, she wasn’t necessarily not going…

— Claire Messud

“My mother was annoyed with me throughout their visit—ostensibly because I wasn’t being a good enough hostess to the cousins, but really…

— Claire Messud

There questions of wanting to be an artist, and what does that mean, what makes you an artist? Are you an artist…

— Claire Messud

“How angry am I? You don't want to know. Nobody wants to know about that. I'm a good girl, I'm a nice…

— Claire Messud