Top 85 Quotes & Sayings by Marisha Pessl - Page 2

When you grow up--and from the look of things, you have awhile--but you learn things never go back to normal simply because everyone's sorry. Sorry is ridiculous.

Man's wobbly little mind isn't equipped for hauling around the great unknowns. Very few people realize, there's no point chasing after answers to life's important questions. They all have fickle, highly whimsical minds of their own. Nevertheless. If you're patient, if you don't rush them, when they're ready, they'll smash into you. And don't be surprised if afterward you're speechless and there are cartoon Tweety Birds chirping around your head. (Gareth van Meer)

…how monstrous the people you loved could be.

People had an illogical, self-serving rationale when it came to interpreting the behavior of others.

Well, it doesn't look good. Makes me look like one of those unloved latchkey children they make after-school specials about." "Don't sell yourself short. You're more Masterpiece Theatre.

What you tend to find in the personal lives of brilliant men is devastation akin to a nuclear bomb going off.

It’s got to be some kind of cult. Anyone offers you Kool-Aid or a hot shower, say no.

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.

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

But when you flee someone, no matter how far you roam, that person will follow you as doggedly as the stars.

…deep-diving love, a love that excavates you. It’s something you have to have before you die in order to have lived.

Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?

You journalists bulldoze life's mysteries, ignorant of what you're so ruthlessly turning up.

Some people are as fragile as butterflies and sensitive and it’s your responsibility not to destroy them. Just because you can

It's funny how the night that changes your life forever starts out like all the others.

Show me what a man hates and I'll show you what he is.

It's a common feeling for people to feel intermittent antipathy toward individuals they're familiar with.

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.

Funnily enough, it is the subject one dreads talking about at length one ends up talking about at length, often without the slightest provocation.

Justice wields an erratic sword, grants mercy to fortunate few. Yet if man doesn't fight for her, 'tis chaos he's left to.

Look at Picasso. O’Neill. Tennessee Williams. Capote. Were these shiny happy people spreading sunshine? No. Only the greatest of personal demons can force you to do powerful work.

What, really, was the difference between something hounding you and something leading you somewhere?

As much as some people would like to believe, for their own peace of mind, that the appearance of evil in this world had a clean cause, the truth was never that simple.

Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. Sometimes knowledge is damaging - not enlightenment but enleadenment.

It was never the act itself but our own understanding of it that defeated us, over and over again.