The Last Life Quotes

“The whole world seemed a maze of shifting mirrors in which I wandered alone, looking always and frenziedly for the exit back into my real life, where people had substance, did as they said they would, and were whole.”
― Claire Messud, The Last Life

“I don't want to sleep,' my mother said. 'I want -- for God's sake, I want to wake up.”
― Claire Messud, The Last Life

“It is a terrible thing to be free. Nations know this; churches know this. People, however, seek to skirt the knowledge,. They elevate freedom to a holy grail, disregarding the truth that constraints are what define us, in life and in language alike; we yearn to be sentenced.”
― Claire Messud, The Last Life

“We don't choose what we believe, or don't believe..and if we do, we'er fooling ourselves.
If choice is illusory, the aim must be to keep the illusion intact.”
― Claire Messud, The Last Life

“Left, right—the politics don’t matter. It’s chaos, it’s entropy, and anyone with any wit should keep away. But the FN’s not the problem. People who think it is are misguided. It’s just a symptom of the problem. Of the problems. Plural. The problems that this nation faces, overrun with immigrants—Arabs, Africans, the English-speakers, all of them—our culture assailed on all sides. Our children, for God’s sake, building bombs for no reason! And our government—this decrepit, farcical liar who fancies himself emperor—our government has nothing to say about it, nothing at all!”
― Claire Messud, The Last Life

“brother, a swarthy barrel-maker whose Breton”
― Claire Messud, The Last Life