When you are the woman upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or … - Claire Messud

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Quote of the day

Whenever the civil government forbids the practice of things that God has commanded us to do, or tells us to do things He has commanded us not to do, then we are on solid ground in disobeying the government and rebelling against it.

Claire Messud

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

Same Author Quotes

If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘Is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘Is this character alive?'

Alive, Character, Possibilities, Question, Reading

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 clarity, to be, in the end, so isolate and inadequate. Even when people try to say things, they say them poorly or obliquely, or they outright lie, sometimes because they're lying to you, but as often because they're lying to themselves.

Fall, Lying, People, Poorly

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 a man to be angry, it’s totally unacceptable for a woman to be angry. I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.

Angry, Book, Men, Possibly, Reader, Writing

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

Above all, in my anger, I was sad. Isn't that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying -- valiantly, fruitlessly -- to eradicate.

Fire, Heart, Kernel, Sad, Sorrow