“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
“There questions of wanting to be an artist, and what does that mean, what makes you an artist? Are you an artist if you're in a gallery in New York and not an artist if you're doing it at home? Do you need legitimation to count? If you've been acculturated to believe that you have certain obligations - familial, social, human - if multitasking has been your forte and that's what's been praised and rewarded, where do you find the single-mindedness, the selfishness to do something like art? I think those are questions that arise differently for women and for men.” ThinkingMenBelieveMeanArtHomeArtistObligationSelfishness Author:Claire Messud
“I think there's no question that there's a reason why small children make great art and why slightly bigger children don't. And it's because small children don't worry about what anybody else thinks and slightly bigger children start to worry about these things.” ThinkingChildrenArtReasonWorryGreat Art Author:Claire Messud
“There's a reason why trainspotters are not girls, there's a reason why there's the myth of the slightly autistic male genius, there's a reason why Gertrude Stein believed that her self-presentation was male. One could argue that was Susan Sontag also. The things that we associate with femaleness are not the single-minded, exclusive pursuit of a vocation, whether it be art or anything else. It is not a model that is widespread in our culture, it's not something we think of for women.” ThinkingArtReasonCultureGirlGeniusMythArguingVocationAutistic Author:Claire Messud
“I think that one of the great things about spending - as in my case - twenty-something years with somebody is that at some point you do love the actual person. They're there little by little, the outline is really pretty clear.” ThinkingGreat ThingsReally Pretty Author:Claire Messud
“We live in a funny time, a funny era, when desire, to be adult desire, has to be conceived as sexual. And that didn't used to be the case. Sexuality is a social construction as much as anything else and I think the realities of sexuality don't always fit into the social constructions that we have, and we live in a goal-oriented time - on all fronts.” ThinkingRealityDesireFitSexualityConstruction Author:Claire Messud
“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
“And then, into the fantasy, as into a dream, would come the thought: it's not like this anymore; the world has changed. Just the way, even at that time fully two years after my mother's death, I'd catch myself thinking about her as alive; and would suddenly remember, an admonitory finger of grief upon my breast, that she was gone.” ThinkingWorldWayYearsTwoDreamRememberMotherGriefFantasyGoneAliveChangedFingersBreastsTwo YearsThinking About Her Author:Claire Messud
