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We Live In A Funny Time, A Funny Era, When Desire, To Be Adult Desire, Has To Be Conceived As Sexual. And That Didn't Used To Be The Case. Sexuality Is A Social Construction As Much As Anything Else And I Think The Realities Of Sexuality Don't Always Fit Into The Social Constructions That We Have, And We Live In A Goal-oriented Time - On All Fronts.

-Claire Messud

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We Live In A

Claire Messud

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We Live In A Funny Time, A Funny Era, When Desire, To Be Adult Desire, Has To Be Conceived As Sexual. And That Didn't Used To Be The Case. Sexuality Is A Social Construction As Much As Anything Else And I Think The Realities Of Sexuality Don't Always Fit Into The Social Constructions That We Have, And We Live In A Goal-oriented Time - On All Fronts.

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I Always Thought I'd Get Farther. I'd Like To Blame The World For What I've Failed To Do, But The Failure - The Failure That Sometimes Washes Over Me As Anger, Makes Me So Angry I Could Spit - Is All Mine, In The End. What Made My Obstacles Insurmountable, What Consigned Me To Mediocrity, Is Me, Just Me. I Thought For So Long, Forever, That I Was Strong Enough -- Or I Misunderstood What Strength Was.

I Think There's No Question That There's A Reason Why Small Children Make Great Art And Why Slightly Bigger Children Don't. And It's Because Small Children Don't Worry About What Anybody Else Thinks And Slightly Bigger Children Start To Worry About These Things.

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We Live In A Culture That Wants To Put A Redemptive Face On Everything, So Anger Doesn't Sit Well With Any Of Us. But I Think Women's Anger Sits Less Well Than Anything Else. Women's Anger Is Very Scary To People, And To No One More Than Other Women Who Think: Oh, Goodness, Well, If I Let The Lid Off, Where Would We Be?

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