I always say to my students, 'If you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.' — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
If you took my reading and writing out of my head, I don't know who I would be. — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world. — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
I'm not a writing group member, not a joiner in that way. I don't seek a wide swath of feedback. — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
I sometimes feel like a British writer more so than I feel like an American writer. But I think that has to… — 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
I believe that, in an ideal world, writers would feel free to write what matters to them without having to consider success,… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
If you're rich, you can leave a library, a building, or a hospital wing. But writing leaves behind a visceral sense of… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
Things we write down are the fragments shored against our ruins. They outlast us, these scraps of words on paper. Like the… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
Writing with kids is an adventure. It seems like someone always has the flu or pink-eye. I mean, you don't even have… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
If you're writing a thriller, and you don't make it compelling, then you've really not done your job. So it's easier for… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
A painting lets us know how somebody literally saw things. A piece of music is another language that transmits a whole wealth… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
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… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
I grew up on British fiction, and I write perhaps more directly out of that tradition. — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
I feel as though there are things that I'm trying to do - you know, capturing truthfully some aspect of human experience… — Claire Messud Copy Share Image
If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is… — 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
