Explore Quotes by Marisha Pessl

Life had been a suit I'd only put on for special occasions. Most of the time I kept it in the back of my closet, forgetting it was there. We were meant to die when it was barely stitched anymore, when the elbows and knees were stained with grass and mud, shoulder pads uneven from people hugging you all the time, downpours and blistering sun, the fabric faded, buttons gone.

She told me her father taught her to live life way beyond the cusp of it, way out in the outer reaches where most people never had the guts to go, where you got hurt. Where there was unimaginable beauty and pain ... They were always reminding themselves to stop measuring life in coffee spoons, mornings and afternoons, to keep swimming way, way down to the bottom of the ocean to find where the mermaids sang, each to each. Where there was danger and beauty and light. Only the now.

To be next to her was to have everything.

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.

... suddenly I was a kid in the hall standing outside my locker about to head to Math. But that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth. That's when all the real things were said.

It's not fair. It's not. But then, that's the game. It makes life great. The fact that it ends when we don't want it to. The ending gives it meaning.

God, the boring relative everyone ignores--no one calls, no one writes--until they need a serious favor.

...the deepest secrets about ourselves that we, in the ultimate act of humanity, will spare those we truly love.

For every man there exists bait he cannot resist swallowing.

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

…how monstrous the people you loved could be.

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.

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

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

It’s easy to be yourself in the dark.

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

Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.

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

Freak the ferocious out.

It’s what we chase but never find. It is the mystery of our lives, the understanding that even when we have everything we want it is one day to leave us. It’s the something unseen, the lurking devastation, the darkness that gives our lives dimension.

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.