Quotes from Matthew Pearl

When they dreamed of turning iron and metal into gold, they called it alchemy. The much more far-fetched dream of turning bound sheafs of plain paper into fortunes, they call publishing

Now, on his way to another lecture, the very thought of entering a room full of students, who still thought it was possible to learn all about something, made him yawn.

A man was leaning idly against an elm. ... The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at him with the familiar, insatiable gleam of the literary admirer.

These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves.

When I ply the cutlass and make the equivalent of sixpence, idiot conscience applauds me. But if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds by writing, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted. No, to come down covered with mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush. To change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, that makes for a quiet conscience.

Stevenson threw back his head and made a slow murmuring sound, If only I could secure a violent death. Pardon? What a fine success! Stevenson continued, spurring Jack into a canter as he lost himself in his thoughts. I wish to die in my boots, you see, Mr. Porter. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from this horse into a ditch, Mr. Fergins--aye, to be hanged, rather than pass through the slow dissolution of illnesses!

Teacher, tender comrade, wife, A fellow farer true through life, Heart whole and soul free, The August father gave to me.

Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on...

What's the use of having eyes if we can't see the world we pass through?

Avoid the Holy Grail, the heroic journeys, the pursuit of a legend--that is not the life of the bookaneer, who must keep his eyes on the ground while other book people live by dreaming.

To be brilliant is not a matter of being right more often than the next fellow; yes, that may be part of the pedestrian definition. It is in large part a matter of holding firm to convictions as long as possible, but not a moment longer.

Writers must write and they suffer if they don't. Then they suffer if they do.

It is always in the parts that we cannot fully understand - the holes in a story, the piece missing - where the real truth of the thing lurks...

It is the real power of a book - not what is on the page, but what happens when a reader takes the pages in, makes it part of himself.

It is the one time Dante calls such explicit attention to the idea of contrapasso-a word for which we have no exact translation, no precise definition in English, because the word in itself is its definition... Well, my dear Longfellow, I would say countersuffering ... the notion that each sinner must be punished by continuing the damage of his own sin against him... just as these Schismatics are cut apart...

To be brilliant is not a matter of being right more often than the next fellow...It is in large part a matter of holding firm to convictions as long as possible, but not a moment longer. The brilliant man must trust he is always right even when adrift alone with his conviction.

We never like the smell of our own vices in other people, Holmes. Ah, let's steer here for a drink or two, Lowell suggested.

Milton was the gold standard of religious poets for English and American scholars. But Milton wrote of Hell and Heaven from above and below, respectively, not from the inside: safer advantages.

No, never mind, I didn't think so. Mead, Dante's theme is man-not a man.' Lowell said finally with a mild patience that he reserved only for students. The Italians forever twitch at Dante's sleeves trying to make him say he is of their politics and their way of thinking. Their way indeed! To confine it to Florence or Italy is to banish it from the sympathies of mankind. We read Paradise Lost as a poem but Dante's Comedy as a chronicle of our inner lives. Do you boys know of Isaiah 38:10

Longfellow, as he climbed up, hoped he would not be asked to speak in front of all the guests during the banquet, but if he were, he would thank his friends for bringing him along.

Believe that when I am at once a man's friend I am always so-nor is it so very hard to bring me to it. And though a man may enjoy himself in being my enemy, he cannot make me HIS for longer than I wish. Good afternoon. Lowell had a way of leaving a conversation with the other person needing more from him.

When Christina would stop to examine an interesting insect or patch of moss, Gabriel would stand in an impatient pose and shrug, not seeing what was at all interesting about it. Sometimes when writing her children's lyrics she thought of Gabriel and Lizzie's son, had he lived, and what he might have grown into.

Better mend a fault than find a fault

It was as if he were pointing to the various illustrated portraits and photographs on the walls of the firm's past and present. These were the artists who had brought literature to the masses, who had changed minds about politics and prejudices, who had rebuilt bridges between England and America all through the pages of their novels and poems.