Claire Messud Quotes

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.

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.

In art, at a certain level, there is no 'better than.' It's just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.

I'm just into making quality stuff if I can, with interesting people and good scripts. But it's very important that it's about something and that it says something. Otherwise, I don't know what the point is, really.

I don't pick roles based on how famous they are going to make me; I pick roles based on how they're going to inspire me intellectually.

A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable.

Even as a kid in drawing class, I had real ambition. I wanted to be the best in the class, but there was always some other feller who was better; so I thought, 'It can't be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it.' That's kind of stuck with me.

I felt my music wasn't aiming at anybody. Everything I was doing was because it was a good song.

My goal has always been to just be a person who makes great art.

I think what's important for myself and anyone else who wants to create a film, or art, is [to] make sure that they have something to say, that they want to share something important, express something important.

I've got a long way to go to being the ultimate best, but I think my time is now. And I'm starting to enter my prime.

I feel like I haven't done my best work yet.

You can tell an honest artist from one who's just given all their songs.

It is not the money but the self-respect and wanting to create good music.

The best work we can ever do in this world is work on being the greatest version of ourselves so we can continue to give the highest version of this to others.

To me, success is making a positive difference through art - making art that affects the world and that changes the way people feel about themselves and the world.

My motivations are thinking I can write better songs, that the concerts can be better.

I don't want to make a movie till I have an idea I have to make. I don't want to make a movie just to make a movie.

And of course, the musician - if he's serious - always answers: My last album is my best, otherwise I wouldn't have done it.

I am not interested in genres. I am interested in doing the best work I can in whatever medium.

You can't do things for money. You just can't act them. There's gotta be something about the script that you really want to do. I wouldn't do a job if I didn't think I could do the best work I possibly could.

For me to get up and feel the urge to go to the set and all that, I have to feel there is something tremendously vibrating to achieve there. I need to lose sometimes a consciousness of the person and the reality in order to be happy to come back into the reality and happier to live it for this cause, to be an artist in this life.

I want to be a prime creator - as every self-regarding artist should do.

A great speech can make you remember something about what you believe, about who you are, about who you want to be. It's rare when that kind of thing happens. But it is important, and it is real.

Trophies or no trophies, we are all just striving to do some really good art and help people's lives with it.