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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
Never
Defeated
Understanding

More quotes by 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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Funnily enough, it is the subject one dreads talking about at length one ends up talking about at length, often without the slightest provocation.
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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Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.
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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God, the boring relative everyone ignores--no one calls, no one writes--until they need a serious favor.
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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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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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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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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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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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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…how monstrous the people you loved could be.
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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His characters are ravaged, beaten. They walk through infernos and emerged charred doves.
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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Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. Sometimes knowledge is damaging - not enlightenment but enleadenment.
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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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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It's funny how the night that changes your life forever starts out like all the others.
Marisha Pessl