Claire Messud

“Nobody would know me from my own description of myself;”

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

“Her self, then, was represented in her books.”

— Claire Messud

My husband had a stalker, briefly.

— Claire Messud

Geniuses have the shortest biographies.

— Claire Messud

“From the beginning, then, but briefly.”

— Claire Messud

The way I saw the world as a child was not wrong. And it's okay to see the world that way. If…

— Claire Messud

“[S]he was my Muse, my alcoholic's bourbon on the rocks: irresistible.”

— Claire Messud

“But just as the world is opening up, it's closing too, and things reveal their previously unimagined shapes.”

— Claire Messud

In a globalised world, so many of us move around so much. You lose things, but you also gain things - or…

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

There's this moment when kids realize that they have power and that they can use it.

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

We live in a culture that wants to put a redemptive face on everything, so anger doesn't sit well with any of…

— Claire Messud

“I was aware of doing only a so-so job on the grown-up career front, but I didn't really care, because there were…

— Claire Messud

I think there's no question that there's a reason why small children make great art and why slightly bigger children don't. And…

— Claire Messud

“My motivation, even in anticipated shame, lay always in others. You can take the woman out of the upstairs, but you can't…

— Claire Messud

“what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL. Don’t all women…

— Claire Messud

I digress a lot - it's how I experience the world. I would like to write in a way that will convey…

— Claire Messud

There is that time right around 30 when you think, your twenties have gone by, and now you really are a grown…

— Claire Messud

I sometimes feel like a British writer more so than I feel like an American writer. But I think that has to…

— Claire Messud

“would not, could not, make a significant overture. My pride depended on this. She would have needed to make the effort, enough…

— Claire Messud

And then, into the fantasy, as into a dream, would come the thought: it's not like this anymore; the world has changed.…

— Claire Messud

Just because something is invisible doesn't mean it isn't there. At any given time, there are a host of invisibles floating among…

— Claire Messud

Popular success is a wonderful gift if it happens, but like money, it's not the motivation. The effort to create a work…

— Claire Messud

“But the shadow settled on them, obliquely, and was shuffled off only when Danielle rose to put on music, a Spanish soprano…

— 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

“Better to believe that sane people were sane and crazy people were crazy and you could put the two types of people…

— Claire Messud

When you are the woman upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first…

— Claire Messud

“I'm a good girl. I'm a nice girl. I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's…

— Claire Messud

“What would it be like to have been locked up in one of those cells for weeks or months or even years,…

— Claire Messud

“I needed them, sure, and we can all argue about the moment when the balance tipped and I needed them so much…

— 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

“But I did wonder what she did, on those afternoons—not just Fridays either, because on the days I had speech team, somebody…

— Claire Messud

“Don't all women feel the same? The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are…

— Claire Messud

“The Thwaites lived on Central Park West in the upper Eighties, in a building that, while manifestly grand, particularly to someone from…

— Claire Messud

“When you’re the Woman Upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard.…

— Claire Messud