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Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.

Marisha Pessl

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Marisha Pessl
Age: 46
Born: 1977
Born: October 26
Writer
Clarkston
Michigan
Betrayal
Empires
Ridiculous
Fall
Reason

More quotes by Marisha Pessl

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When I'm creating characters, I definitely think of theme songs. Writing for me is very visual, so I sometimes think of it in terms of a movie with a soundtrack, and try to transfer that to words.
Marisha Pessl
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His characters are ravaged, beaten. They walk through infernos and emerged charred doves.
Marisha Pessl
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Justice wields an erratic sword, grants mercy to fortunate few. Yet if man doesn't fight for her, 'tis chaos he's left to.
Marisha Pessl
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In college I studied '60s and '70s radicalism, student activism, forms of political violence, groups like the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New Left.
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Well, life isn't a cakewalk, is it?! Eighty-nine percent of the world's most valuable art was created by men living in rat-infested flats. You think Velásquez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the luxuries of central heating and twenty-four-hour pizza delivery?!
Marisha Pessl
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Good bands you can kind of lose, then come back and realize they're still good.
Marisha Pessl
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I hate to think of a day where a compelling book or a compelling authorial voice would be lost simply because that person doesn't have a Web site. But I think that, to use the Internet in a positive way, to turn people on to reading, is something that authors shouldn't really shy away from necessarily.
Marisha Pessl
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Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times.
Marisha Pessl
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Some people, every now and then, simply had to have One Too Many, go drifty voiced and slouch mouthed, swimming willfully around in their own sadness as if it were hot springs.
Marisha Pessl
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It was never the act itself but our own understanding of it that defeated us, over and over again.
Marisha Pessl
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...I couldn't let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wal-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles.
Marisha Pessl
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It was as if Hannah had sprung a leak and her character, usually so meticulous and contained, was spilling all over the place.
Marisha Pessl
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I'm not afraid of total failure. In the end, we're all just food for worms, so what are we so worried about?
Marisha Pessl
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It’s what we chase but never find. It is the mystery of our lives, the understanding that even when we have everything we want it is one day to leave us. It’s the something unseen, the lurking devastation, the darkness that gives our lives dimension.
Marisha Pessl
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I believe writers need to be chameleons, or like Meryl Streep, who can play all sorts of characters. A good writer should be able to cross gender lines and people of all social classes. So for me, writing from a male point of view would be a great challenge, that I would look forward to taking on.
Marisha Pessl
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...the deepest secrets about ourselves that we, in the ultimate act of humanity, will spare those we truly love.
Marisha Pessl
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Sadly, American teenagers are to a weightless vacuum as seat cushions are to polyurethane foam -
Marisha Pessl
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Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you do everything for, strive for, wound everything around you.
Marisha Pessl
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God, the boring relative everyone ignores--no one calls, no one writes--until they need a serious favor.
Marisha Pessl
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What, really, was the difference between something hounding you and something leading you somewhere?
Marisha Pessl