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" 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
Story
Unknown
People
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" I'm a big believer in the complex realities of young people's lives. "
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Complex
Young
People
" We read to find life, in all its possibilities. "
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Find
Life
Possibilities
" I have said it somewhere - our literary lived lives are as important as our literally lived lives. "
Claire Messud
Somewhere
Important
Lived
" For me, the ages between 9 and 12 were great because it was before you wore any masks, and you had some autonomy in the world. You had some freedom, and you felt you had unlimited ambition. It's when you thought, 'I'm going to write plays. I'm going to be president. I'm going to do this; I'm going to do that.' And then it all falls apart. "
Claire Messud
Ambition
Thought
Freedom
" For me, it was a formative experience reading Eliot when I was younger. 'The Waste Land,' in particular. "
Claire Messud
Me
Reading
Waste
" The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art. "
Claire Messud
Work
Better
Art
" Henry James and Edith Wharton are huge for me because they gave me a way to understand America while still respecting the European backgrounds of my relatives. "
Claire Messud
Relatives
Way
Understand
" I sometimes feel like a British writer more so than I feel like an American writer. But I think that has to do with my subjective understanding of what it means to be either of those things. "
Claire Messud
Feel
Understanding
Think
" Years ago, I worked in a newspaper office, and there were men that would have fits of temper, and it was just accepted that that's who they were, and everyone would laugh about it, but if a woman got upset or angry, something wasn't right: she was 'hysterical' or 'a little unhinged.' It didn't have the same sort of connotation at all. "
Claire Messud
Men
Woman
Upset
" As a reader since very early, I have found myself drawn to rants. "
Claire Messud
Early
Very
Drawn
" 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
Failure
World
Success
" I digress a lot - it's how I experience the world. I would like to write in a way that will convey that to the reader, but also I need clarity. "
Claire Messud
Experience
Clarity
Need
" Carmiel Banasky, a writer like no other, is a talent to watch. "
Claire Messud
Other
Writer
Watch
" To be weighed down by things - books, furniture - seems somehow terrible to me. "
Claire Messud
Down
Things
Me
" I feel as though there's a lot invested in my background in being an outsider. "
Claire Messud
Feel
Outsider
Background
" What is the truth? Is it what you experience? Is it what I experience? Or is there some objective truth in between? "
Claire Messud
Experience
You
Truth Is
" As any of us approaches middle age, we inevitably come up against our limitations: the realization that certain dearly-held fantasies may not be realized; that circumstances have thwarted us; that even with intention and will we may not be able to set our ship back on the course we'd planned. "
Claire Messud
Circumstances
Ship
Back
" Because we moved so much, I was always having to adapt and work out the lay of the land. So I felt envious of those who did not have to try. "
Claire Messud
Because
Work
Try
" When you move around a lot, there are little bits of you from everywhere. I mean, my father's French, and I speak French, and there's a kind of struggle in me that says, 'I'd like to be French.' But I've never been fully part of that culture, that role. "
Claire Messud
Father
Struggle
Speak
" When you're a kid, and someone is your best friend, you almost don't need words. It's almost like puppies in a - frolicking in a garden or something. You don't articulate stuff. You just live it. "
Claire Messud
Live
Best
Friend
" If it's unseemly and possibly dangerous for a man to be angry, it's totally unacceptable for a woman to be angry. "
Claire Messud
Angry
Woman
Totally
" If you know what you're doing, it's not interesting. It has to be a challenge; it has to seem impossible and urgent to do it. And then you do it. "
Claire Messud
Challenge
Impossible
Interesting
" I always say to my students, 'If you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.' "
Claire Messud
Writing
Say
Than
" I always feel as though I'm not quite Canadian enough for everybody. "
Claire Messud
Always
Enough
Everybody
" Writing with kids is an adventure. It seems like someone always has the flu or pink-eye. I mean, you don't even have to be in direct contact with anyone to get pink-eye. But for parents who write, flexibility becomes essential, and as long as I have a pad of paper and a pen, I can write anywhere. Starbucks is fine. "
Claire Messud
Writing
Adventure
Parents
" Awards bolster your confidence in wonderful ways. But they aren't the world. "
Claire Messud
World
Wonderful
Confidence
" For those of us whose thoughts digress; for whom unexpected juxtapositions are exhilarating rather than tiresome; who aim, if always inadequately, to convey life's experience in some semblance of its complexity - for such writers, the semi-colon is invaluable. "
Claire Messud
Experience
Thoughts
Unexpected
" If you're rich, you can leave a library, a building, or a hospital wing. But writing leaves behind a visceral sense of what it was like to be alive on the planet in a particular time. Writing tells us what it meant for someone to be human. "
Claire Messud
Library
Building
Rich
" 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. "
Claire Messud
Think
Anger
Culture
" Place and displacement have always been central for me. A type of insecurity goes with that: you are always following the cues, like learning the dance steps when the dance is already under way. "
Claire Messud
Insecurity
Learning
Me