Quote of the Week: Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

April 25, 2012 | Musings

The novel I am quoting this week is Marisha Pessl’s debut novel (and only published novel to date), Special Topics in Calamity Physics. It is kind of like Donna Tartt’s A Secret History, but quirkier and with no incest. If you haven’t read the novel before, I recommend giving it a try.

“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. Increasing the scale, the depth of content, the universal themes. And I don’t care what those themes are- they’re yours to uncover and stand behind-so long as, at the very least, there is courage.”