Marisha Pessl Quotes

Quotes about:

Books Character Dad Feelings Hate Writing

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

Art, Men, Thinking

Marisha Pessl (2013). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.432, Penguin UK

48 Copy quote
It's kind of funny...the moments on which life hinges. I think growing up you always imagine your life - your success - depends on your family and how much money they have, where you go to college, what sort of job you can pin down, starting salary...But it doesn't, you know. You wouldn't believe this, but life hinges on a couple of seconds you never see coming. And what you decide in those few seconds determines everything from then on... And you have no idea what you'll do until you're there.

Marisha Pessl

Jobs, Growing Up, Couple

8 Copy quote
I hate how the people who really get you are the ones you can never hold on to for very long. And the ones who don’t understand you at all stick around.

Marisha Pessl

Hate, Long, People

16 Copy quote
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

Philosophy, Inspiration, Fighting

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.333, Penguin

4 Copy quote
Just when you think you've hit rock bottom, you realize you're standing on another trapdoor.

Marisha Pessl

Thinking, Rocks, Realizing

4 Copy quote
Happiness is a hound dog in the sun. We aren't on Earth to be happy, but to experience incredible things. - Hannah Schneider

Marisha Pessl

Dog, Earth, Sun

4 Copy quote
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

Dad, Live Your Life, Mind

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.58, Penguin

4 Copy quote
Life was a freight train barreling toward just one stop, our loved ones streaking past our windows in blurs of color and light. There was no holding on to any of it, and no slowing it down.

Marisha Pessl

Past, Light, Color

4 Copy quote
People don’t realize how easy life is to change. You just get on the bus.

Marisha Pessl

People, Realizing, Life Is

4 Copy quote
For every man there exists bait he cannot resist swallowing.

Marisha Pessl

Motivational, Men, Bait

Marisha Pessl (2013). “Night Film”, p.463, Random House

5 Copy quote
But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better.

Marisha Pessl

Sweet, School, Narrative Structure

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.83, Penguin

7 Copy quote
He said you couldn't pretend the terrible things in life didn't happen. You can't clean it up. You keep all the refuse and the scars. It's how you learn. And try to make improvements.

Marisha Pessl

Things In Life, Trying, Scar

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.199, Penguin

6 Copy quote
Always live your life with your biography in mind.

Marisha Pessl

Book, Beer, Live Your Life

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.58, Penguin

7 Copy quote
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

Spring, Sadness, Swimming

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.203, Penguin

4 Copy quote
Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last.

Marisha Pessl

Sweet, Epic, Greek

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.84, Penguin

4 Copy quote
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

Making Love, Library, Littles

6 Copy quote
I was aware now, as ever, that between all people there were First Times You See Them and Last Times you See Them.

Marisha Pessl

People, Lasts, Firsts

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.197, Penguin

4 Copy quote
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

Dad, Character, Play

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.197, Penguin

4 Copy quote
It’s hard, in America, not to equate ‘happiness’ with ‘things’.

Marisha Pessl

America, Hard

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.112, Penguin

4 Copy quote
Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.

Marisha Pessl

Lying, Kernel

6 Copy quote
Freak the ferocious out.

Marisha Pessl

Freak

4 Copy quote
We're living longer, we social network alone with our screens, and our depth of feeling gets shallower. Soon it'll be nothing but a tide pool, then a thimble of water, then a micro drop.

Marisha Pessl

Water, Feelings, Tides

4 Copy quote
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

Feelings, Guilt, Affliction

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.166, Penguin

4 Copy quote
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.

Marisha Pessl

Teeth, Three, Next

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.194, Penguin

4 Copy quote
...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

Letting Go, Lonely, America

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.53, Penguin

7 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Samantha Shannon

Marisha Pessl

Follow

Born: October 26, 1977
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics