Quotes by Marisha Pessl

Though blessed with the enviable properties of a mink coat—graceful, unreasonable, and impractical no matter what she was draped over—she was nevertheless one of those people whose personality proved to be the bane of modern mathematicians. She was neither a flat nor solid shape. She showed no symmetry at all. Trigonometry, Calculus and Statistics all proved useless. Her Pie Chart was a muddle of arbitrary wedges, her Line Graph, the silhouette of the Alps. And just when one listed her under Chaos Theory—Butterfly Effects, Weather Predictions, Fractals, Bifurcation diagrams and whatnot—she showed up as an equilateral triangle, sometimes even a square.

His characters are ravaged, beaten. They walk through infernos and emerge charred doves.

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.

I just got another kitten, you know. Found another trademark. Its quite embarrassing I misse

Betrayal isnt ridiculous. Its the reason empires fall.

Youll find that great artists dont love, live, fuck or even die like ordinary people. Because they always have their art. It nourishes them more than any connection to people. Whatever human tragedy befalls them, theyre never too gutted, because they need only to pour the tragedy into their vat, stir in the other lurid ingredients, blast it over a fire. What emerges will be even more magnificent than if the tragedy had never occurred.

I need to give you one last bit of advice in the off chance this rather extraordinary and enviable situation in which you find yourself is actually true- that somehow youve fallen deep down into a Cordova story. I stared back at him. Be the good guy, he said. How do I know Im the good guy? He pointed at me, nodding. A very wise question. You dont. Most bad guys think theyre good. But there are a few signifiers. Youll be miserable. Youll be hated. Youll fumble around in the dark, alone and confused. Youll have little insight as to the true nature of things, not until the very last minute, and only if you have the stamina and the madness to go to the very, very end. But most importantly- and critically- you will act without regard for yourself. Youll be motivated by something that has nothing to do with the ego. Youll do it for justice. For grace. For love. Those large rather heroic qualities only the good have the strength to carry on their shoulders. And youll listen.

...I couldnt 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.

We were up the whole night just talking, walking the city. You can walk those blocks forever, take a break on the edge of the fountain, eat pizza and snow cones, awed by the human carnival all around you.

Sadly, American teenagers are to a weightless vacuum as seat cushions are to polyurethane foam -

One of my pet peeves was when an adult imagined they had to encapsulate Life for you, hand you Life in a jar, in an eyedropper, in a penguin paperweight full of snow-A Collectors Dream.

Always live your life with your biography in mind.

Always live your life with your biography in mind, Dad was fond of saying.Naturally, it wont be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason,but at the very least you will be living grandly.

“Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.”

“She was lost now, shed been silenced- another dead branch on Cordovas warped tree.”