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Claire Messud Biography

Claire Messud (born 1966) is an American novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor's Children (2006).

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Claire Messud Quotes

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.

Art, Children, Make, Thinking

But do you know this idea of the imaginary homeland? Once you set out from shore on your little boat, once you embark, you'll never truly be at home again. What you've left behind exists only in your memory, and your ideal place becomes some strange imaginary concoction of all you've left behind at every stop.

Boat, Home, Ideas, Memories, Memory, Set

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.

Desire, Era, Funny, Reality, Sexuality, Thinking

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. '

Abiding, Dog, Invisible, People

Popular success is a wonderful gift if it happens, but like money, it's not the motivation. The effort to create a work of art that is true and potentially lasting, that is the very best work of art you can create at that point in your life - a book that may only reach or move a few people but will seem to people somehow transformative. That's the ideal; that's always the motivation.

Art, Effort, Happens, Motivation, Moving

It doesn't ever occur to you, as you fashion your mask so carefully, that it will grow into your skin and graft itself, come to seem irremovable.

Fashion, Graft, Grow, Mask, Skins

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.

Great Things, Love, Pretty, Really Pretty, Somebody, Thinking

I always thought I'd get farther. I'd like to blame the world for what I've failed to do, but the failure - the failure that sometimes washes over me as anger, makes me so angry I could spit - is all mine, in the end. What made my obstacles insurmountable, what consigned me to mediocrity, is me, just me. I thought for so long, forever, that I was strong enough -- or I misunderstood what strength was.

Farther, Forever, Long, Misunderstood, Obstacles, Strong

We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

Life, Possibilities, Possibility, Read

We live in a culture that wants to put a redemptive face on everything, so anger doesn't sit well with any of us. But I think women's anger sits less well than anything else. Women's anger is very scary to people, and to no one more than to other women, who think my goodness, if I let the lid off, where would we be?

Let, Lid, People, Scary, Sit, Thinking

There's a reason why trainspotters are not girls, there's a reason why there's the myth of the slightly autistic male genius, there's a reason why Gertrude Stein believed that her self-presentation was male. One could argue that was Susan Sontag also. The things that we associate with femaleness are not the single-minded, exclusive pursuit of a vocation, whether it be art or anything else. It is not a model that is widespread in our culture, it's not something we think of for women.

Art, Culture, Girl, Model, Reason, Thinking

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

Attainable, Easy, Felt, Hardest, Path, Project

Geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Biographies, Genius, Geniuses, Shortest

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.

Death, Dream, Grief, Mother, Thought

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?).

Being Sad, Doe, Know, Like, Sad, Sauce

I measure my life out in books. " "You should be measuring your life by living. Correction: you shouldn't be measuring your life. What's the point?

Book, Books, Life, Living, Measuring, Should

When you are the woman upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard. Once your mother dies, nobody loves you “best of all. ” It's a small thing, you might think, and maybe it depends on your temperament, maybe for some people it's a small thing, but for me [. . . ]

Depends, Love You, Mother, Thinking, Upstairs, Woman

The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.

Accurately, Art, Human, Human Experience, Humans

I was funny -- ha-ha, not peculiar. It was a modest currency, like pennies: pedestrian, somewhat laborious, but a currency nonetheless. I was funny, in public, most often at my own expense.

Currency, Like, Modest, Peculiar, Pennies

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

Happy, Say, Students, Writing

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