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" I grew up on British fiction, and I write perhaps more directly out of that tradition. "
Claire Messud
More
Write
British
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" As a kid, I used to tell all these stories. I remember meeting a childhood friend, and we were talking. We remembered that I had made up this story about going to Mars. And she looked at me and said, 'I didn't sleep for a week after that!' "
Claire Messud
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" It's still unacceptable for women to have negative emotions, especially anger, and I was trying to write against that. "
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" A painting lets us know how somebody literally saw things. A piece of music is another language that transmits a whole wealth of emotion and wordless experience. But writing is special in the way at allows us to temporarily enter another person's world, to step outside the boundaries of our own time and space. "
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Space
Experience
" 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
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" I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman. "
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" I feel that I have an impractical and deleterious snobbery about the relation of literature to the market. I thought, 'I've become the kind of crap you buy at airports!' It was exciting, but it was not a fantasy I'd ever had. "
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" I remember laughing so hard as a kid. "
Claire Messud
Hard
Kid
Laughing
" I'm a big believer in the complex realities of young people's lives. "
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Complex
Young
People
" I have always been interested in that relationship between what happens in our head and what happens in the world. "
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Been
Head
Relationship
" I'll always find the hardest path. Needless to say, not always a good idea. "
Claire Messud
Hardest
Good
Find
" The fictional narratives that television, film, and the news provide for girls and young women are appalling. "
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Women
Young
News
" For me, the watershed was Hurricane Katrina. If that didn't get people out on the streets, then what will? "
Claire Messud
People
Me
Hurricane
" I liked the idea of being from 'somewhere else.' I do think that's inherited. My father never had a fixed sense of where home was, and for my sister and me, it is much easier not to belong than to belong. "
Claire Messud
Think
Father
Never
" I don't trust people who are likable. "
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Who
Trust
Likable
" I've never been very practical or realistic - I've always felt that if a project seems easy, or even attainable, why pursue it? "
Claire Messud
Project
Why
Seems
" At university, my generation were ready to fight, but we didn't really have anything to fight for. "
Claire Messud
University
Fight
Generation
" 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
" 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
" In making up stories, as in reading stories, I could create a contained world in which an experience is shared in its entirety. "
Claire Messud
World
Reading
Create
" We're all living in some state of illusion, even if modestly. "
Claire Messud
Illusion
State
Even
" 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
" 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
Live
Me
" If you're writing a thriller, and you don't make it compelling, then you've really not done your job. So it's easier for me not to set out with certain goals, and then I can't see them as unmet. It's like life generally: If I'm not aiming to be physically fit, then I'm not always thinking about being unfit. "
Claire Messud
Life
Writing
Thinking
" As a reader, I have always enjoyed 'ranty' books, but they are all written by men. "
Claire Messud
Reader
Always
Men
" We are all unappealing. It is just a matter of how much we let people see it. "
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How
See
Much
" 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. "
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Live
Best
Friend
" In midlife, I feel that my tendency to acquire books is rather like someone smoking two packs a day: it's a terrible vice that I wish I could shuck. "
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Day
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" 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
" You can't make a character do something they wouldn't do. "
Claire Messud
Make
Something
You
" The people who don't read - who are they? How do they make sense of things? "
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Things
People
Sense