Claire Messud Quotes

I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. It's funny - people ask me that, and I don't know what to tell them.

I've just grown up a lot and started to encounter some of the big decisions of life in terms of what career I wanted to do and figuring out personal relationships and things.

At 21, you've come out of the craziness. Maybe you've been to university, but now it's time to get serious. It's the age where you make decisions about your life.

I was just dying to get out of my twenties.

Most of my friends between 21 and 31 are at different stages of figuring out what the hell they are going to do with their lives. It's a big part of our generation. What is the next step?

When you're 40, you can't ride the fence anymore. You gotta make definite decisions about your life.

It's not that I don't respect my parents' authority or appreciate all that they did for me, but when I was 18 I was able to move out, and I was out. I feel like a different person since then; I mean, it's obviously a big turning point in life. I feel like I've established myself, and I'm a smarter and more mature for it.

Growing up, you have all these ideas, and then you're confronted and faced with the real world for the first time. And you have to think of what you want your life to be.

I started working at a time when most of my friends were still figuring their lives out.

When I was little, the world was simple. But as a young adult, I'm learning that as we have to make choices - education, career, lifestyle - life gets more and more complicated.

Until I figure out what I'm going to do when I grow up, I'm not going to be grown up.

Everybody grows up and they have to make decisions, and they try and make the best decisions that they know how to. It's taken them their whole lives to finally step out and start making their own decisions.

It took me a long time to find out that I was born to be an actor. It was the last thing on my list, although my list was very small. I didn't know what to do. But kids weren't supposed to know what to do back then; we were all cute and we'd find out what we'd do later in life.

At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do.

Now that I'm feeling the responsibilities of adulthood, the choices we make become an incredible weight.

All my friends were in college when I was making 'Superbad.' We were drinking beer and watching movies and eating pizza. It wasn't like I was going to nice restaurants or anything like that, and I lived like a frat guy. Eventually it was time to grow up, be healthy and be responsible. You can't live like a kid forever, you know?

I still feel like a kid sometimes myself so hard to believe that I'm a mom. Now I'm an adult! It only took 38 years!

You either mellow at 30, or your head explodes - take your choice.

You can be 24 and continue to live like you're at college, or even continue to live like you're in high school. Or you can put on a shirt and tie and pretend to be an adult.

I do think that despite my best efforts to resist it, I am now a grown-up. It's due to lots of very difficult decisions that you make over a long period of time - about motherhood, wifehood, and work, and all the things that one has to make decisions about.

You don't have that much choice in your life, which is one of the big lessons I've learned. I was going to be a designer whether I wanted to be a designer or not.

I have reached a place in my life where I need to sit down and say, 'Well, what do I do? What's best for me?' I need to look into options for the future.

I always did think that when I turned 40, I'd start coming into my own.

Some ideas, like what you're going to do with your life, take time to form.

For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.