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" Women aren't supposed to want stuff. They're not supposed to have high emotions. "
Claire Messud
Stuff
High
Emotions
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" 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
" I always say to my students, 'If you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.' "
Claire Messud
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Say
Than
" If you ask a ten-year-old girl what she wants to do when she grows up and a fourteen-year-old girl what she wants to be when she grows up, in many cases, the older child will have a much less free sense of what's possible. "
Claire Messud
Child
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She
" I had a memory span about as long as the lines in a school play. "
Claire Messud
Lines
Play
School
" 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
" If you live in a family or have five roommates, there's some sort of reality check, but when you live alone, there's a lot more leeway for your fantasy life to be more and more a part of your everyday life. "
Claire Messud
Live
You
Alone
" I feel as though there are things that I'm trying to do - you know, capturing truthfully some aspect of human experience - and I'm trying really hard not to be fake. And in writing, as in life, it's harder than you think. "
Claire Messud
Know
Writing
Think
" 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
" The relevant question isn't, 'Is this a potential friend for me?' but, 'Is this character alive?' "
Claire Messud
Alive
Potential
Me
" 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
" 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
" I was someone who believed that every day should be different from the last. "
Claire Messud
Day
Someone
Every Day
" When I finish a book, I always fear that I'll never write again. It takes a lot of time. You always think if you could just do something else - but nothing else makes me as happy. "
Claire Messud
Fear
Book
Think
" 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
" I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman. "
Claire Messud
Woman
Missing
Me
" If I look at my make-up, Canada is a huge part of what I am. "
Claire Messud
Part
I Am
Huge
" The Strauss allowed me to be a writer. Without it, 'The Emperor's Children' would not exist. When I received the award, I was teaching, had one baby, and was pregnant with another. There was no time for writing. "
Claire Messud
Time
Writing
Award
" At the end of the day, what would be a Canadian sensibility? Is it Michael Ondaatje? Alice Munro? Is Margaret Atwood more Canadian than Neil Bissoondath? "
Claire Messud
Than
Day
More
" Carmiel Banasky, a writer like no other, is a talent to watch. "
Claire Messud
Other
Writer
Watch
" Especially since having children, a lot of the time if you ask me, 'Have you read that book?' the answer would be 'not personally.' "
Claire Messud
Children
Answer
Book
" I still believe on some level that at the end, somebody will say, 'You get an A-minus for your life.' And it's not true. It's not true. "
Claire Messud
You
Say
Life
" We read to find life, in all its possibilities. "
Claire Messud
Find
Life
Possibilities
" 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
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Upset
" Rushing around can be a pointless diversion from actually living your life. "
Claire Messud
Life
Your
Rushing
" The people who don't read - who are they? How do they make sense of things? "
Claire Messud
Things
People
Sense
" I have said it somewhere - our literary lived lives are as important as our literally lived lives. "
Claire Messud
Somewhere
Important
Lived
" Girls, in particular, use storytelling to establish hierarchies, a pecking order. There is a sort of jockeying of who is in charge of shared history. "
Claire Messud
Charge
History
Order
" 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?' "
Claire Messud
Anger
People
Think
" I don't trust people who are likable. "
Claire Messud
Who
Trust
Likable
" Obama was the first president whose biography makes sense to me. He can walk into a room anywhere and find common ground with any person. "
Claire Messud
Me
Find
Person