The relevant question isn't, 'Is this a potential friend for me?' but, 'Is this character alive?'

When I am teaching, I first give out Tolstoy's 'Childhood,' his first published book. It is so transparent. It gives you exactly what it was like to be on a Russian estate in 1830. You are there. And that is the hope when you sit down and write still, I think - that you can transmit something of what life is like now.

Girls, in particular, use storytelling to establish hierarchies, a pecking order. There is a sort of jockeying of who is in charge of shared history.

Claire Messud Quotes