Claire Messud : (6)

" In a globalised world, so many of us move around so much. You lose things, but you also gain things – or hope to gain them. " - Claire Messud

" Things we write down are the fragments shored against our ruins. They outlast us, these scraps of words on paper. Like the detritus from the tsunami washing up on the other side of the ocean, writing is what can be salvaged. " - Claire Messud

" 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

" To be weighed down by things – books, furniture – seems somehow terrible to me. " - Claire Messud

" We think that – as kids, you know – that kids make up stories and live in a sort of fictional place, but that, as grown-ups, we tell the truth and live in fact. But, of course, the reality is we take the facts that we know, and then we fill in all the blanks. " - Claire Messud

" 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