“When you are the woman upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard. Once your mother dies, nobody loves you “best of all.” It's a small thing, you might think, and maybe it depends on your temperament, maybe for some people it's a small thing, but for me [...]” PeopleThinkingFirstsMightMotherDiesLove YouDependsTemperamentSmall ThingsThink Of YouUpstairsPostcards Author:Claire Messud
“The professor husband of a friend of mine has likened children to the insane. I often think of it. He says that children live on the edge of madness, that their behavior, apparently unmotivated, shares the same dream logic as crazy people's. I see what he means, and because I've learned to be patient with children, to tease out the logic that's always somewhere there, and irrefutable once explained.” PeopleThinkingMeanChildrenDreamShareCrazyMinesHusbandBehaviorLogicMadnessPatientEdgesInsaneI've LearnedProfessorsBe PatientTeaseCrazy PeopleUnmotivated Book:The Woman Upstairs Source: The Woman Upstairs
“An abiding preoccupation for me is how much of our lives are invisible and unknown by other people like the Chekhov story The Lady With the Little Dog.” PeopleLittlesStoriesOur LivesDogInvisibleAbidingPreoccupationChekhov Author:Claire Messud
“Popular success is a wonderful gift if it happens, but like money, it's not the motivation. The effort to create a work of art that is true and potentially lasting, that is the very best work of art you can create at that point in your life - a book that may only reach or move a few people but will seem to people somehow transformative. That's the ideal; that's always the motivation.” PeopleArtBookMovingMotivationEffortWonderful Author:Claire Messud
“It's the strangest thing about being human: to know so much, to communicate so much, and yet always to fall so drastically short of clarity, to be, in the end, so isolate and inadequate. Even when people try to say things, they say them poorly or obliquely, or they outright lie, sometimes because they're lying to you, but as often because they're lying to themselves.” PeopleKnowsTryingHumansEndsSometimesLyingFallCommunicateClarityBeing HumanInadequate Author:Claire Messud
“Nobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an account, I tailor it, I adapt, I try to provide an outline that can, in some way, correlate to the outline that people understand me to have -- that, I suppose, I actually have, at this point. But who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It's the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding.” PeopleKnowsWayGivingTryingI CanMy OwnAccountsWho I AmDescriptionGrantsHidingKnow MeOutlinesUnderstand MeTailorsPrecious Gifts Book:The Woman Upstairs Source: The Woman Upstairs
“We live in a culture that wants to put a redemptive face on everything, so anger doesn't sit well with any of us. But I think women's anger sits less well than anything else. Women's anger is very scary to people, and to no one more than other women who think: Oh, goodness, well, if I let the lid off, where would we be?” PeopleIfsThinkingWantWellsFacesCultureFeminismGoodnessScary Author:Claire Messud
