“As a kid, I used to tell all these stories. I remember meeting a child...” — Claire Messud Quote

“As a kid, I used to tell all these stories. I remember meeting a childhood friend, and we were talking. We remembered that I had made up this story about going to Mars. And she looked at me and said, 'I didn't sleep for a week after that!'”

“They, too, carry the source within them. But for their children, cast into a windblown century without God, where is there to be but alone and unseen, anonymous in the crowd? Who will carry us back to a place that lives only in the vast imaginary? 'Do you not see how a caged bird, oh youth, / Breaks into song when it recalls its ancestral home?”