Claire Messud

“For me, the watershed was Hurricane Katrina. If that didn't get people out on the streets, then what will?”

“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.”

“My tendencies are much more the Henry James thing, where we sit in silence at the table for three minutes, and our whole lives are changed because of a revelation that never quite happens but almost bubbles to the surface.”

“Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world.”

“For many of us, we set out thinking there will be time in the future, and then suddenly we find ourselves at a moment when we have to acknowledge that the future isn't infinite.”

“As a reader since very early, I have found myself drawn to rants.”

“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.”

“The feeling I had several times in youth, when lying in a field staring up at the night sky, that I might fall into the infinite void - for people like me, this idea mostly provokes anxiety.”

“I always feel as though I'm not quite Canadian enough for everybody.”

“We're all living in some state of illusion, even if modestly.”

“I'll always find the hardest path. Needless to say, not always a good idea.”