“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“I was crazy. I was crazy in the way a child is crazy, in the way of someone who believes, with rash… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The professor husband of a friend of mine has likened children to the insane. I often think of it. He says that… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
If you ask a ten-year-old girl what she wants to do when she grows up and a fourteen-year-old girl what she wants… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
As a kid, I used to tell all these stories. I remember meeting a childhood friend, and we were talking. We remembered… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
“The apartment was entirely, was only, for her; a wall of books, both read and unread, all of them dear to her… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
When I am teaching, I first give out Tolstoy's 'Childhood,' his first published book. It is so transparent. It gives you exactly… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
My mother turned 40 in 1973. So in 1970 - when 'The Female Eunuch' came out and Ms. magazine was founded -… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
There's this moment when kids realize that they have power and that they can use it. — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
Especially since having children, a lot of the time if you ask me, 'Have you read that book?' the answer would be… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
Everybody's always living in fiction just as much as children, but the way our stories are faked is curtailed by all sorts… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
“There are social struggles, and the agonies and embarrassments of puberty...and the weight of the world that falls upon each of us… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
The Strauss allowed me to be a writer. Without it, 'The Emperor's Children' would not exist. When I received the award, I… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
“he was playing on the climbing structure by himself—or “by his own,” as the children sometimes charmingly put it.” — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
I have said it somewhere - our literary lived lives are as important as our literally lived lives. — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
“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… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
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… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
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… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
The fictional narratives that television, film, and the news provide for girls and young women are appalling. — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
“I don't want to sleep,' my mother said. 'I want -- for God's sake, I want to wake up.” — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
“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;… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
“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-… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
I digress a lot - it's how I experience the world. I would like to write in a way that will convey that to… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
We think that - as kids, you know - that kids make up stories and live in a sort of fictional place, but that,… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
“It makes sense that if you stand almost daily in the middle of a perfect crescent of shore, with a vista open to eternity,… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
