A Quote by Claire Messud

As a reader since very early, I have found myself drawn to rants. — © Claire Messud
As a reader since very early, I have found myself drawn to rants.
Since the early '80s, I've found myself in war zones in various parts of the world.
First and foremost, I consider myself a storyteller. And I'm endlessly fascinated with people, with what they do and why... and how they feel about it. Which means I'm interested in romance fiction. I was drawn to it, as both a reader and a writer, at the very beginning of my career. It's my kind of storytelling.
I was eccentric, even as a kid. I was an early reader, an early talker. I was very curious in a way that maybe the other kids weren't. I was a little more outgoing.
I do find that I'm drawn to people in my life, romantically or not, that have something to teach me. I'm drawn to people who I feel like I can learn from. I'm not really drawn to toxic people - I don't find myself discovering that someone in my life is toxic very often. But there is some sense of being changed by each person that I think I'm drawn to.
The idea that boxing lends itself to cinema so well is because it's usually a morality play - good against evil, insecurity and triumph, fear strikes out, so the audience can really get drawn into the drama of it. Also, it was sensual and very primal. I think subliminaly we do two things - life is a fight, life is a struggle and we understand that from our early, early, early ancestors, and life is a race.
As soon as I started reading, I found myself drawn to fictional character's homes as much as I was to the characters themselves.
By losing my external things, I found myself. I found something very powerful, very permanent, that I could have with me all the time.
I'm an avid reader myself, and what any one reader accesses at any one time is very powerful and personal to them. Clearly you can't even begin to touch that. A novel is a singular vision, and then a myriad of readers have their own experience of that.
I think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it.
Of course, I had my heart broken as a teen. I was desperately in love with myself. Then I found out that I was completely shallow. I haven't spoken to myself since.
I think sometimes I have been drawn into trying to be too aggressive too early. I have learnt that I can give myself time.
I think we have to go through everything we go through in our life, and I believe my purpose in life was to teach self-reliance. So I had the experience of relying on myself very early in life in order to have that knowing, because otherwise I would've just read about it. I think of it now as a great advantage that I had. It certainly taught me to rely upon myself at a very young age. And that's what I've been teaching since I was a little boy.
My early colleagues and myself helped create the life styles of Americans and, by osmosis, of the rest of the world. I found it difficult to reconcile success with humility. I tried it first, but it meant avoiding the very essence of my career - total exhilaration and the ecstasy of creativity.
Tomorrow, they will say, Donald Trump rants and raves at the press. I'm not ranting and raving. I'm just telling you. You know, you're dishonest people. But - but I'm not ranting and raving. I love this. I'm having a good time doing it. But, tomorrow, the headlines are going to be, Donald Trump rants and raves.
It's very natural and simple to me, drawing, because I've drawn since I was a kid. It's just the most normal thing for me to do. And it's very meditative.
Over the years, I've found myself drawn more and more to simpler meals, to dishes that are focused, and to experiences that strip away the excess.
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