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1e4a31d
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I think I've heard this story before. He died alone?" "Everyone dies alone."
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Marisha Pessl |
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fb557f2
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You're mistaking love for perfection," I said. "Real love when it's there? It's just "
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marisha-pessl
neverworld-wake
young-adult-fiction
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Marisha Pessl |
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29bf4c3
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He was one of those people you initially believed had a foreign accent, though it turned out he was American, only spoke delicately, as if every word were something to be carefully dusted off and held up to the light.
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Marisha Pessl |
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df6be90
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The million-dollar marital Band-Aid, never a wise idea.
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Marisha Pessl |
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2813b40
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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. She was always demanding of herself, Do I dare? Do I dare disturb the universe? From Prufrock. Her dad revered the poem, I guess, and the entire family lived in answer to it. They were always reminding themselves to stop measuring ..
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Marisha Pessl |
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d01ffc9
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Landlocked Switzerland: They're Nice and Neutral Only Because They're Tiny
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lecture
switzerland
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Marisha Pessl |
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6f79f89
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She looked at me as if I were a snag in tights.
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Marisha Pessl |
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ff9b568
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The notes weren't played," he went on, "They were poured from a Grecian ."
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grecian-urn
keats
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Marisha Pessl |
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f5eaf8b
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The bad things that happen to you don't have to mean anything at all. -Nora Halliday
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Marisha Pessl |
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45b1664
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Nora, biting her lip, pointed at the small end table on my right, where there was a black-and-white photograph in an antique silver frame. It was Olivia standing with her husband, Knightly, probably some twenty years ago. They had their arms around each other, posing beside an antique Bentley in front of a colossal country manor. They looked happy, but, of course, that didn't say much. Everyone smiles for a photograph.
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Marisha Pessl |
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0e91714
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But now that you mention it, will you promise to off me when I'm ninety and never leave home without an oxygen tank? Make a day of it. Just roll me and my wheelchair off the George Washington Bridge and call it a life. Deal?" The request seemed to make her smile. "Deal." "They should really tack that on to the marriage ceremony. 'Do you promise to love, honor, obey me, and also to kill me when I can no longer stand in a shower?'?"
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Marisha Pessl |
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70816ae
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WELCOME TO THE BLACKBOARDS This is the Cordovites' premier wormhole, where time ticks backward, trees grow down, light eats itself, fear is an opening, and life is Sovereign, Deadly, Perfect.
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night-film
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Marisha Pessl |
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ffae801
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That was women for you -- always morphing. One minute they were helpless, needing shelter and English muffins, the next they were ruthlessly bending you to their will like you were a piece of sheet metal.
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Marisha Pessl |
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eaa1dbf
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I love to put my characters in the dark, it's only then that I can see exactly who they are
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Marisha Pessl |
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0e0ee30
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Maybe she was really good at improv. I couldn't be certain she was nineteen or that her name really was Nora Halliday. Maybe she was like one of those sweaters with an innocent little thread hanging off of it: One pull, the whole thing unraveled.
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Marisha Pessl |
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ce2075b
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Everyone associated with the slow printed word is fast becoming the Great Crested Newt of the culture. First it was the poets, the playwrights, then the novelists. Veteran newspapermen are next
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Marisha Pessl |
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e50c6a9
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Vast fortunes did that to people. It took them to the cleaners, cruelly starched and steam-pressed them so all their raw edges, all the dirt and hunger and guileless laughter, were ironed out. Few survived real money.
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Marisha Pessl |
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b59f5f7
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When your child is seized by an idea with the zeal of a fundamentalist Bible salesman from Indiana, stand in his or her way at your own risk.
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Marisha Pessl |
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b9547f5
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When it was daylight, we'd been sitting on a stoop watching the street get light. She mentioned the light took eight minutes to leave the sun and reach us. You couldn't help but love that light traveling so far through the loneliest of spaces to get here, to come so far. It was like we were the only two people in the world.
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love
sun
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Marisha Pessl |
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7143f4c
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Mogest du fur die Wahrheit kampfen -, fur deine eigene Wahrheit, nicht fur die Wahrheit anderer
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Marisha Pessl |
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fcccaaf
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Because I saw, suddenly, how it would always be for me, Sam's life unfolding like slides in an old projector I'd always be clicking through in the dark, stunning leaps forward in time--but never the uncut reel.
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Marisha Pessl |
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38dcf8c
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It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They'd probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you.
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Marisha Pessl |
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2752f91
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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.
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Marisha Pessl |
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013df19
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I miss him every single day," he said. "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."
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Marisha Pessl |
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602498a
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Only the greatest of personal demons can force you to do powerful work.
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Marisha Pessl |
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50a78c3
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God, the boring relative everyone ignores--no one calls, no one writes--until they need a serious favor.
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Marisha Pessl |
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1a05ae9
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Most of the kids had been so mentally screwed up by their parents they needed more than twelve weeks of wilderness. They needed reincarnation. To die and just come back as a grasshopper, as a fucking weed. That'd be preferable to the agony they were in just by being alive.
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Marisha Pessl |
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9e19611
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You are a magnificent and powerful person," I said."
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Marisha Pessl |
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29497fd
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It was true. After our divorce, I'd ended up in a slight relationship with my last research assistant, Aurelia Feinstein, age 34-though let me state for the record it was not as hot as it sounded. Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure little red entry on Hungarian poetry. It was dead silent, no one gave me any dierection, and nothing was where it was supposed t..
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sex
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marisha Pessl |
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030dad4
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I know Long Island like I know my kitchen. I understand it's there for my pleasure and enjoyment, but somehow I never manage to go there.
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marisha pessl |
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7ca66c0
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There was an unspoken understanding that when a reporter chased a story, hunches and theories became airborne and other reporters could catch them like a cold.
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Marisha Pessl |
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55e9077
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But that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth.
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Marisha Pessl |
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9827b18
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There it is," he'd say reverentially. "The box represents the mysterious threshold between reality and make believe."
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schrodinger
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Marisha Pessl |
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628ac7c
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A wife sets the ambience of a man's life.
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Marisha Pessl |
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727edb3
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Life had been a suit I'd only put on for special occasions. Most of the time I'd 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, down pours and blistering sun, the fabric faded, buttons gone.
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life
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Marisha Pessl |
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87c0ee9
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You know what Confucius said?" "Remind me". "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves" --
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Marisha Pessl |
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a815651
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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.
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Marisha Pessl |
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e1ab468
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It is adorable and healthily childlike secretly to believe in fairy tales, but the instant one articulates such viewpoints to other people, one goes from darling to dumbo, from childlike to chillingly out of touch with reality," wrote Albert Pooley in The Imperial Consort of the Dairy Queen (1981, p. 233)."
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Marisha Pessl |
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bac6629
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With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you.
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Marisha Pessl |
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2683082
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Once you slaughter the lamb, you are capable of everything and anything, and the world is yours.
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Marisha Pessl |
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d2e1827
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Into that empty form they could unload the grief and regret of their own lives, be rid of it, feel lucky and light for a few days, comforted by the thought, At least that wasn't me.
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Marisha Pessl |