American - Novelist | 1966 -
I love my books, and with all their dog-ears and under-linings they are irreplaceable, but I sometimes wish they'd just vanish.
Claire Messud
LoveWishSometimesIrreplaceable
To be weighed down by things - books, furniture - seems somehow terrible to me.
MeFurnitureDownThingsTerrible
If I hear a story or a fact about somebody I don't know and have never met, it's like getting a hollow vessel that you can fill up with whatever you want. That's more tempting to me than to try to replicate what I actually know.
MeStoryYouKnowWantNever
I went around in my teens and early 20s thinking that life was a con trick. I had managed to grow up believing in all sorts of romantic ideas about hard work and justice and truth, and it seemed the real world was much more complicated and shaded than I wanted to believe.
LifeWorkHard WorkTruthJustice
I don't trust people who are likable.
TrustPeopleWhoLikable
We are all unappealing. It is just a matter of how much we let people see it.
PeopleMatterSeeJustMuchHow
Especially since having children, a lot of the time if you ask me, 'Have you read that book?' the answer would be 'not personally.'
ChildrenTimeMeBookYouAsk
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.
ThoughtFeelLiteratureYouKind
I had a memory span about as long as the lines in a school play.
SchoolMemoryLongPlayLinesAbout
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.
WalkMeFindPersonPresidentFirst
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.
FreedomGreatMeAmbitionWorldYou
For me, it was a formative experience reading Eliot when I was younger. 'The Waste Land,' in particular.
ExperienceMeReadingLandWaste
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Claire Messud quotes