Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— 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

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

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

— Claire Messud

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

— 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

“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

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

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

— 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

“there’s a period of accommodation before you are formally and”

— Claire Messud

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

— Claire Messud

“So: now a new year, a new beginning. I've vowed not to complain. I'm too good at it, and need to practice…

— 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

“But our friendship was, at the same time, like a city you hadn’t visited in a long time, where you know the…

— 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

“There is, I came to realize, what the mind wants and what the body wants. The mind can excite the body, but…

— Claire Messud

When I finish a book, I always fear that I'll never write again. It takes a lot of time. You always think…

— Claire Messud

Because we moved so much, I was always having to adapt and work out the lay of the land. So I felt…

— Claire Messud