I remember going to a son’s friend’s bar mitzvah, and the text that he chose to explicate was right at the beginning of Genesis. It was not about a fall from grace or a fall from perfection; it was about an awakening into consciousness, which is what it means to be human. Claire Messud Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Don’t go around asking the question, ‘Is this character likeable?’ and expect that to be compatible with serious literary endeavours. That’s not what it’s about. Claire Messud Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Claire Messud Read Quote
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 Read Quote
What is the truth? Is it what you experience? Is it what I experience? Or is there some objective truth in between? Claire Messud Read Quote
