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Marisha Pessl

Marisha Pessl Quotes

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Famous Marisha Pessl Quotes

“Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. Sometimes knowledge is damaging - not enlightenment but enleadenment. If one recognizes the difference and prepares oneself - it is extraordinarily brave. Because when it comes to certain human miseries, the only witnesses should be the pavement and maybe the trees. (Gareth van Meer)”

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Author:Marisha Pessl
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“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.”

StoriesLastsDiesBornSweetTragedyMiseryTricksCraftsCooksGreekShort StoryEpicCoincidenceDestinedMundaneBridesQuirkyGrotesqueQuietnessGreek Tragedy
Book:Special Topics in Calamity Physics
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“It was what accidental deaths did to people, made everybody's sea floor irregular and uneven, causing tidal currents to collide, surge upward, thereby resulting in small yet volatile eddies churning at everybody's surface. (In the more dangerous cases, it created a lasting whirlpool in which the strongest swimmers could drown.)”

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Book:Special Topics in Calamity Physics
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“Dad always warned that it was misleading when one imagined people, when one sas them in the Mind's Eye, because one never remembered them as they really were, with as many inconsistencies as there were hairs on a human head (100,000 to 200,000). Instead, the mind used a lazy shorthand, smoothed the person over into their most dominating characteristic--their pessimism or insecurity (something really being lazy, turning them into either Nice or Mean)--and one made the mistake of judging them from this basis alone and risked, on a subsequent encounter, being dangerously surprised.”

PeopleMindHumansMeanPersonsMadeEyeUsedMistakeNiceJudgingHairDadBasesRememberedCharacteristicsEncountersLazyInsecurityPessimismMisleadDominatingInconsistencyShorthandBeing Lazy
Author:Marisha Pessl
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“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.”

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Author:Marisha Pessl
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“The late great Horace Lloyd Swithin (1844-1917), British essayist, lecturer, satirist, and social observer, wrote in his autobiographical Appointments, 1890-1901 (1902), "When one travels abroad, one doesn't so much discover the hidden Wonders of the World, but the hidden wonders of the individuals with whom one is traveling. They may turn out to afford a stirring view, a rather dull landscape, or a terrain so treacherous one finds it's best to forget the entire affair and return home.”

WorldMayHomeTurnsIndividualSocialForgetViewsWonderReturnLateAffairBritishLandscapeDullObserversStirringAppointmentsLecturerTreacherousTerrainEssayistsSatiristTravel AbroadWonder Of The World
Book:Special Topics in Calamity Physics
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“It felt as if we'd been to war together. Deep in a jungle, alone, I had relied on them, these strangers. They'd held me up in ways only people could. When it was over, an ending never felt like an ending, only an exhausted draw, we went our separate ways. Be we were bonded forever by the history of it, the simple fact they'd seen the raw side of me and me of them, a side no one, not even closest friends or family had ever seen before, or probably ever would.”

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Author:Marisha Pessl
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