Marisha Pessl

Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.

— Marisha Pessl

It’s easy to be yourself in the dark.

— Marisha Pessl

Freak the ferocious out.

— Marisha Pessl

“It was a fluke. But then, life is.”

— Marisha Pessl

“You want the girl next door? Go next door!”

— Marisha Pessl

“ Everyone smiles for a photograph. ”

— Marisha Pessl

Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.

— Marisha Pessl

To be next to her was to have everything.

— Marisha Pessl

“How scary and sudden the shift from Living to Dead.”

— Marisha Pessl

“The truth about what happens to us in this world keeps changing … it never stops.”

— Marisha Pessl

“A deus ex machina will never appear in real life so you best make other arrangements.”

— Marisha Pessl

Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.

— Marisha Pessl

“The dark side of life has a way of finding us all anyway, so stop chasing it.”

— Marisha Pessl

“Everyone has a Cordova story, whether they like it or not.”

— Marisha Pessl

“Only the greatest of personal demons can force you to do powerful work.”

— Marisha Pessl

“Fuck you," she said, giggling. "And your little dog too.”

— Marisha Pessl

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

Occasionally when I'm procrastinating writing, I'll while away the hours on iTunes. You can just keep going forever and find these bands…

— Marisha Pessl

We're living longer, we social network alone with our screens, and our depth of feeling gets shallower. Soon it'll be nothing but…

— Marisha Pessl

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

— Marisha Pessl

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

— Marisha Pessl

Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry…

— Marisha Pessl

“It's one of the biggest scandals of life, to learn that the cruelest thing someone could say to you was you were…

— Marisha Pessl

Juliet and Romeo be damned, you can't be in love until you've flossed your teeth next to the person at least three…

— Marisha Pessl

“I'd have to, if on Sunday I wanted to run off with some "slack-jawed Suzy," some "invertebrate," a "post-pubescent wasteoid who imagines…

— Marisha Pessl

“It is adorable and healthily childlike secretly to believe in fairy tales, but the instant one articulates such viewpoints to other people,…

— Marisha Pessl

“Millions of people walked through their lives numb, dying to feel something, to feel alive. To be chosen by Cordova for a…

— Marisha Pessl

“If all histories have a period known as The Golden Age, somewhere between The Beginning and The End, I suppose those Sundays…

— Marisha Pessl

“Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you…

— Marisha Pessl

I believe writers need to be chameleons, or like Meryl Streep, who can play all sorts of characters. A good writer should…

— Marisha Pessl

“Dad said certain people's sanity, in order to maintain a healthy equilibrium, required getting messy once in a while, what he called…

— Marisha Pessl

Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows…

— Marisha Pessl

“Battered by shifing currents and a cold, unrelenting wind, we sailed past deserted islands crowded with pines and a ghost tree growing…

— Marisha Pessl

“Never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those…

— Marisha Pessl

“It was true. After our divorce, I'd ended up in a slight relationship with my last research assistant, Aurelia Feinstein, age 34-though…

— marisha Pessl

“My mind was spinning from the symmetry of this equation I suddenly faced: magical on one side, scientific on the other, a…

— Marisha Pessl

“Oh? Now tell me your gut reaction to the following words. Colonial. Dellahay. Wood. Patio. Five Pieces. Sun resistant, wind resistant, Judgment…

— Marisha Pessl

“The days shuffled by like bland schoolgirls. I didn’t notice their individual faces, only their basic uniform: day and night, day and…

— Marisha Pessl

“Concert pianists get to be quite chummy with dead composers. They can't help it. Classical music isn't just music . It's a…

— Marisha Pessl

“It was the cause of many of Dad's outrages too, when people elected themselves his personal oracle of Delphi... They'd made the…

— Marisha Pessl