Quotes from Marisha Pessl

Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world.

We are all anthologies. We are each thousands of pages long, filled with fairy tales and poetry, mysteries and tragedy, forgotten stories in the back no one will ever read.

Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you do everything for, strive for, wound everything around you.

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

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.

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.

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 couldn't 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.

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

He said you couldn't pretend the terrible things in life didn't happen. You can't clean it up. You keep all the refuse and the scars. It's how you learn. And try to make improvements.

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

how monstrous the people you loved could be.

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

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.

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.