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Book Quotes by Claire Messud

8 Book quotes by Claire Messud

All Book quotes Claire Messud’s page

Claire Messud’s relationship with books shines through these eight reflections, each revealing a facet of her literary sensibility. This modest collection offers a quick window into how she perceives the power of stories and the act of turning pages.

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

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

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

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I measure my life out in books." "You should be measuring your life by living. Correction: you shouldn't be measuring your life.…

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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…

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Anyway, these books I love, they’re all books by men—every last one of them. Because if it’s unseemly and possibly dangerous for…

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The effort to create a work of art that is true and potentially lasting, that is the very best work of art…

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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…

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More by Claire Messud

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

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

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“Life is about deciding what matters. It’s about the fantasy that determines the reality. Have you ever asked yourself whether you’d rather fly or…

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

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

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

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“I don't want to sleep,' my mother said. 'I want -- for God's sake, I want to wake up.”

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

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

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

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We think that - as kids, you know - that kids make up stories and live in a sort of fictional place, but that,…

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“It makes sense that if you stand almost daily in the middle of a perfect crescent of shore, with a vista open to eternity,…

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“Once aware of my isolation, I was afraid not of it but of its interruption.”

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“who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It’s the most precious gift I can give,…

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“My everyday Appleton life, my phones calls to my father, my occasional beers with friends, my Saturday-morning jobs around the reservoir - what was…

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