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But Most Critically, Sweet, Never Try To Change The Narrative Structure Of Someone Else's Story, Though You Will Certainly Be Tempted To, As You Watch Those Poor Souls In School, In Life, Heading Unwittingly Down Dangerous Tangents, Fatal Digressions From Which They Will Unlikely Be Able To Emerge. Resist The Temptation. Spend Your Energies On Your Story. Reworking It. Making It Better.

-Marisha Pessl

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But Most Critically, Sweet,

Marisha Pessl

...

But Most Critically, Sweet, Never Try To Change The Narrative Structure Of Someone Else's Story, Though You Will Certainly Be Tempted To, As You Watch Those Poor Souls In School, In Life, Heading Unwittingly Down Dangerous Tangents, Fatal Digressions From Which They Will Unlikely Be Able To Emerge. Resist The Temptation. Spend Your Energies On Your Story. Reworking It. Making It Better.

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Narrative Structure

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Dad Always Warned That It Was Misleading When One Imagined People, When One Sas Them In The Mind's Eye, Because One Never Remembered Them As They Really Were, With As Many Inconsistencies As There Were Hairs On A Human Head (100,000 To 200,000). Instead, The Mind Used A Lazy Shorthand, Smoothed The Person Over Into Their Most Dominating Characteristic--their Pessimism Or Insecurity (something Really Being Lazy, Turning Them Into Either Nice Or Mean)--and One Made The Mistake Of Judging Them From This Basis Alone And Risked, On A Subsequent Encounter, Being Dangerously Surprised.

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.

You Journalists Bulldoze Life's Mysteries, Ignorant Of What You're So Ruthlessly Turning Up.

But When You Flee Someone, No Matter How Far You Roam, That Person Will Follow You As Doggedly As The Stars.

But Most Critically, Sweet, Never Try To Change The Narrative Structure Of Someone Else's Story, Though You Will Certainly Be Tempted To, As You Watch Those Poor Souls In School, In Life, Heading Unwittingly Down Dangerous Tangents, Fatal Digressions From Which They Will Unlikely Be Able To Emerge. Resist The Temptation. Spend Your Energies On Your Story. Reworking It. Making It Better.

Narrative Structure

I Was Aware Now, As Ever, That Between All People There Were First Times You See Them And Last Times You See Them.

…deep-diving Love, A Love That Excavates You. It’s Something You Have To Have Before You Die In Order To Have Lived.

There Was Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, And Then There Was The Most Mind-bending Frontier Of The Natural World, Women.

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.

It’s Easy To Be Yourself In The Dark.

I Was Aware Too How Strange Adults Were, How Theirs Lives Were Vaster Than They Wanted Anyone To Realize, That They Actually Stretched On And On Like Deserts, Dry And Desolate, With An Unpredictable, Shifting Sea Of Dunes.

It Was As If Hannah Had Sprung A Leak And Her Character, Usually So Meticulous And Contained, Was Spilling All Over The Place.

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.

Happiness Is A Hound Dog In The Sun. We Aren't On Earth To Be Happy, But To Experience Incredible Things. - Hannah Schneider

Those Around You Can Have Their Novellas, Sweet, Their Short Stories Of Cliché And Coincidence, Occasionally Spiced Up With Tricks Of The Quirky, The Achingly Mundane, The Grotesque. A Few Will Even Cook Up Greek Tragedy, Those Born Into Misery, Destined To Die In Misery. But You, My Bride Of Quietness, You Will Craft Nothing Less Than Epic With Your Life. Out Of All Of Them, Your Story Will Be The One To Last.

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Betrayal Isn't Ridiculous. It's The Reason Empires Fall.

Always Live Your Life With Your Biography In Mind.

Life Was A Freight Train Barreling Toward Just One Stop, Our Loved Ones Streaking Past Our Windows In Blurs Of Color And Light. There Was No Holding On To Any Of It, And No Slowing It Down.

God, The Boring Relative Everyone Ignores--no One Calls, No One Writes--until They Need A Serious Favor.

Not Returning Phone Calls Is The Severest Form Of Torture In The Civilized World.

Some People Are As Fragile As Butterflies And Sensitive And It’s Your Responsibility Not To Destroy Them. Just Because You Can

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... 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.

I Haven't Always Been A Writer And I Suppose I Tiptoed Around The Idea Of Writing Full Time, Because It's So Isolating.

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.

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What You Tend To Find In The Personal Lives Of Brilliant Men Is Devastation Akin To A Nuclear Bomb Going Off.

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