Claire Messud Quotes

I think the things that are most intimate are nameless and shapeless.

'Secret' is about intimacy between two people and the connection you have with someone that goes beyond words.

Very often I've known people who wouldn't say a word to each other, but they'd go to see movies together and experience life that way.

When you're around your family, and you have that history and that shared language, you say things you'd be embarrassed to hear quoted back to you later.

I was an only child of a father who loved me deeply, but we didn't play catch, even though I was an athlete. We didn't go fishing or hunting or any of the things I wanted to do. Why not? He just didn't do that.

My husband doesn't know what my songs are about - even when they're about him. He's very British in that way. He doesn't ask, and he doesn't want to be told.

Sometimes I think I am still that 5-year-old girl playing with her dogs in the yard. That's how I see myself.

Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.

Your love to me was like an unread book.

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.

The masterstroke of male fraternity, I believed, was the practice of never speaking of anything remotely personal or related to one's emotions. That way, no one is ever made uncomfortable. Any such awkward moments can always be dispelled with a flurry of pretend-punches.

I found that something exists between director and actor sometimes that surpasses or transcends language.

Silence is a universal language. It's like music or painting.

My relationship with my brothers... it's almost weird. We've never fought, we finish each other's sentences, but not in a creepy way. We talk about the things that we love and share music with each other.

When you don't have to say 'I love you,' when you don't have to prove your love by singing a song, or express it through the body, that's two souls connecting.

It's weird because I do act like best friends, but still, I don't sit there and say my mum's my best friend. That doesn't really cover it.

Sometimes people give away more by not saying something.

That's the beauty of love. Sometimes you don't have to say nothing.

In the early days of love sometimes, you will report an ecstatic feeling you have met someone who seems to understand you without you needing to speak.

My father was hard to know and gave little indication that there was much to know. He claimed he remembered almost nothing about his childhood.

In dialogue scenes, my favorite moments are when people aren't talking because you can cut to the heart of the matter much more quickly, often with a look. People hide things in words. When you don't have words to hide things in, it becomes much more direct and much more immediate of a connection.

The main relationship in the whole series was the one between the camera and Fleabag. I had to convince myself that whoever was watching on the other side of the camera was instantly complicit with Fleabag and instantly a friend of hers.

My mom is my best friend. I tell her everything from what's going on in my life and my work to my love life.

Playing SpongeBob is freeing. There is something intrinsically about him that people identify with no matter their age.