Claire Messud Quotes

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 memor...

From the beginning, then, but briefly.

About Author

Claire Messud (born October 8, 1966) is an American/Canadian/French novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor's Children (2006).

From anywhere: where once he had feared that this immense city would set him adrift, a spinning atom in the ether, and where once he had seen in this the ultimate terror of insignificance, he now, and...

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; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that...

You wouldn’t want them to know that in your heart, you are proud, and maybe even haughty, and are riven by thoughts the revelation of which would show everyone how deeply Not Nice you are.

He said that’s what family is for: the people who love you see you in the best light, as you want to be seen.

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 peo...

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 patie...

I want to make a difference. But get a job? I worry that will make the ordinary, like everybody else.

I’m forty-two years old—which is a lot more like middle age than forty or even forty-one.

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?

Isn’t it funny, she said, stroking with an inky finger the beads of condensation on her glass of white wine, that year was such an unhappy one, for me. Remember poor Reza? And Skandar away so much—and...

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...

But just as the world is opening up, it's closing too, and things reveal their previously unimagined shapes.

I instead was reminded of watching my cousins at Thanksgiving through my own front windows, that strange sense of distance, even where you should belong.

For real?' Cassie's eyes glittered, and it occurred to me that all along she'd expected me to stop us. She'd goaded and teased me, made out like I was a wimp; but she also relied on me to keep us safe...

Nobody would know me from my own description of myself;

But this is what I think: you only see what you expect to see. Your brain lets the rest go. Because life’s tumult, with its infinite sounds and smells and signs, rushes around you like a river in floo...

Don't all women feel the same? The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are with our fury. We're all furies, except the ones who are too damned foolish, and my worry now is...

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 e...