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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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Marisha Pessl
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: October 26
Writer
Clarkston
Michigan
Defeated
Understanding
Never

More quotes by Marisha Pessl

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Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.
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Just when you think you've hit rock bottom, you realize you're standing on another trapdoor.
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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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In America, people of a certain age ask, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' In my house you were more likely to be asked, 'Where were you when you first read 'The Catcher In The Rye?
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Some people are as fragile as butterflies and sensitive and it’s your responsibility not to destroy them. Just because you can
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What, really, was the difference between something hounding you and something leading you somewhere?
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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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Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?
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Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry.
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Good bands you can kind of lose, then come back and realize they're still good.
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Always live your life with your biography in mind, Dad was fond of saying. Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason, but at the very least you will be living grandly.
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...the deepest secrets about ourselves that we, in the ultimate act of humanity, will spare those we truly love.
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God, the boring relative everyone ignores--no one calls, no one writes--until they need a serious favor.
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Juliet and Romeo be damned, you can't be in love until you've flossed your teeth next to the person at least three hundred times.
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It's funny how the night that changes your life forever starts out like all the others.
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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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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Sadly, American teenagers are to a weightless vacuum as seat cushions are to polyurethane foam -
Marisha Pessl
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If I scribbled a few words on a cocktail napkin and showed it to my family, they'd proclaim it astonishing and more culturally relevant than the Bible.
Marisha Pessl
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May you walk a lighted path. May you fight for truth - your truth, not someone else's - and may you understand, above all things, that you are the most important concept, theory, and philosophy I have ever known.
Marisha Pessl