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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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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.
Marisha Pessl
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Dad's Theory of Arrogance--that everyone always assumes they're the Principal Character of Desire and/or Loathing in everybody else's Broadway Play.
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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It's not fair. It's not. But then, that's the game. It makes life great. The fact that it ends when we don't want it to. The ending gives it meaning.
Marisha Pessl
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Show me what a man hates and I'll show you what he is.
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.
Marisha Pessl
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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.
Marisha Pessl
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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?
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
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Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realizing that your book is as open to interpretation as an abstract painting. People bring their own beliefs and attitudes to your work, which is thrilling and surprising at the same time.
Marisha Pessl
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…how monstrous the people you loved could be.
Marisha Pessl
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It’s got to be some kind of cult. Anyone offers you Kool-Aid or a hot shower, say no.
Marisha Pessl
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Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. Sometimes knowledge is damaging - not enlightenment but enleadenment.
Marisha Pessl
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Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.
Marisha Pessl
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Like that lightning that comes out of the blue when there's not even a storm going on, just a crazy crack in the sky. With something like that right in front of you, you can't help but feel there's new possibilities out there.
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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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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...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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His characters are ravaged, beaten. They walk through infernos and emerged charred doves.
Marisha Pessl