Claire Messud Quotes - Page 2

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• Maybe that, really, is as good a definition as any of an artist in the world: a ruthless person.

  Claire Messud

  Artist, World, Definitions

  Claire Messud (2013). “The Woman Upstairs”, p.138, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Just because something is invisible doesn't mean it isn't there. At any given time, there are a host of invisibles floating among us. There are clairvoyants to see ghosts; but who sees the invisible emotions, the unrecorded events? Who is that sees love, more evanescent than any ghost, let alone can catch it? Who are you tell me that I don't know what love is?

  Claire Messud

  Mean, Love Is, Events

  Claire Messud (2013). “The Woman Upstairs”, p.77, Vintage

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• And then, into the fantasy, as into a dream, would come the thought: it's not like this anymore; the world has changed. Just the way, even at that time fully two years after my mother's death, I'd catch myself thinking about her as alive; and would suddenly remember, an admonitory finger of grief upon my breast, that she was gone.

  Claire Messud

  Mother, Dream, Grief

  4 Copy quote

• Does Being Happy simply Create More Time, in the way that Being Sad, as we all know, slows time and thickens it, like cornstarch in a sauce?).

  Claire Messud

  Being Sad, Doe, Sauce

  Claire Messud (2013). “The Woman Upstairs”, p.156, Vintage

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• I've always felt that if a project seems easy, or even attainable, why pursue it? I'll always find the hardest path.

  Claire Messud

  Path, Easy

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• We live in a funny time, a funny era, when desire, to be adult desire, has to be conceived as sexual. And that didn't used to be the case. Sexuality is a social construction as much as anything else and I think the realities of sexuality don't always fit into the social constructions that we have, and we live in a goal-oriented time - on all fronts.

  Claire Messud

  Reality, Thinking, Desire

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• I think that one of the great things about spending - as in my case - twenty-something years with somebody is that at some point you do love the actual person. They're there little by little, the outline is really pretty clear.

  Claire Messud

  Thinking, Great Things, Really Pretty

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world.

  Claire Messud

  Writing, Essentials, World

  "Claire Messud and Robin Desser". Interview with Robin Desser, www.slate.com. May 3, 2013.

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• 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 it's because small children don't worry about what anybody else thinks and slightly bigger children start to worry about these things.

  Claire Messud

  Art, Children, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• There questions of wanting to be an artist, and what does that mean, what makes you an artist? Are you an artist if you're in a gallery in New York and not an artist if you're doing it at home? Do you need legitimation to count? If you've been acculturated to believe that you have certain obligations - familial, social, human - if multitasking has been your forte and that's what's been praised and rewarded, where do you find the single-mindedness, the selfishness to do something like art? I think those are questions that arise differently for women and for men.

  Claire Messud

  Art, Believe, Home

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• An abiding preoccupation for me is how much of our lives are invisible and unknown by other people like the Chekhov story The Lady With the Little Dog.

  Claire Messud

  Dog, People, Abiding

  "Midlife and Fantasy at 42 — Claire Messud’s New Novel Resonates". Interview with Heidi Legg, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 2, 2013.

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• I believe that, in an ideal world, writers would feel free to write what matters to them without having to consider success, failure, the market, etc.

  Claire Messud

  Believe, Writing, What Matters

  "Claire Messud and Robin Desser". Interview with Robin Desser, www.slate.com. May 3, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• The professor husband of a friend of mine has likened children to the insane. I often think of it. He says that children live on the edge of madness, that their behavior, apparently unmotivated, shares the same dream logic as crazy people's. I see what he means, and because I've learned to be patient with children, to tease out the logic that's always somewhere there, and irrefutable once explained.

  Claire Messud

  Dream, Children, Husband

  Claire Messud (2013). “The Woman Upstairs”, p.18, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.

  Claire Messud

  Heart, Concern, Ifs

  4 Copy quote

• I’m not a writing group member, not a joiner in that way. I don’t seek a wide swath of feedback.

  Claire Messud

  Writing, Groups, Way

  "Claire Messud and Robin Desser". Interview with Robin Desser, www.slate.com. May 3, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.

  Claire Messud

  Writing, Voice, Missing

  "Great Male Protagonists We Wouldn’t Want to Be Friends With" by Claire Fallon, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 4, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

• I always say to my students, if you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.

  Claire Messud

  Writing, Students

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

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