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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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Marisha Pessl
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: October 26
Writer
Clarkston
Michigan
Firsts
Shots
First
Asked
People
Asks
Age
Catcher
Read
Catchers
House
Kennedy
Certain
Shot
America
Likely

More quotes by 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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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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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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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.
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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 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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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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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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To be next to her was to have everything.
Marisha Pessl
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Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.
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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Good bands you can kind of lose, then come back and realize they're still good.
Marisha Pessl
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What, really, was the difference between something hounding you and something leading you somewhere?
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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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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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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Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.
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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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