Quotes from Matthew Pearl

the city usually only dulled and interrupted him. He required quiet, and to keep himself to himself, more than any writer he'd known. He was a shy beast who loved his burrow.

Dante had done what so many writers could only imagine—turned poetry into a living power, and a living power was something no one could cage inside the covers of a book.

The boundary between being an exile and being mad seemed to be a fine one... losing one's rightful place in the world could mean losing one's mind.

and since the beginning of human history the soldier and the poet had shared great (or terrible) imaginations that remade their surroundings.

In younger years, he'd wonder whether he was more doctor or writer. Since the dark period back home, he questioned if he was really either—witnessing death all around him had robbed him of both.

Nobody knew what they were supposed to believe or what neighbors and relatives believed. Ghosts suddenly became as legitimate an option as anyone's god.

He always came back to the belief that creeds, religious and otherwise, were for those who did not have sufficient internal more guidance.

No poet is ever really young... Their delicate ears always hear the far-off whisper of death, which coarser souls must travel towards for years before their duller senses touch....

Lo giorno se n'andava - Day was departing... Dante slows his deliberation as he prepares to enter the infernal realms for the first time: ... e io sol uno - and only I alone... -how lonely he felt! He has to say it three times! io, sol, uno... m'apparecchiava a sostener la guerra, sì del cammino e sì de la pietate.

E. C. FERGINS

What exactly does he look like? Like no other. There must be some way to describe him. He looks... to be honest... It was rare to find Davenport lost for words and he seemed annoyed by the fact. I have it, Fergins. He looks like one of those ancient Greek sculptures of a god, just before the Romans knocked off its arms and nose. There you have Davenport truly believing he was answering a question.

It is my happiest thought that with all the drawbacks of my temperament, I have yet to lose a real friend.

The mind of our country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.

His life was a suicide. He gave up his soul for fear, little by little, until there was nowhere left in the universe but hell.

The piratical publishers hire them to perform such tasks as stalking around the harbor for advance sheets coming from England, to come by through bribes or even theft.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

I was fortunate that Yale has a very open and creative law school. I took many courses outside the law school, and every semester, the students had a literature reading group. I was asked to lead one on 'Dante and the Concept of Justice,' and it was around that time that I began writing the novel.

Films have become shorter in length, jumpier in style, and simpler in story so that they can be more easily transferred to once under-exploited international markets.

Beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, film has been a shadow thrown over the minds of all novelists. Ever since, novelists have strained to make themselves more relevant and, whether consciously or not, novel-writing has been influenced by cinematic doctrines - by turns, embracing and defying it.

When Dickens arrives in the United States in November of 1867, he's already in questionable health. So by the end of the trip, he was really in failing condition, and really, he would never recover completely after this point, and you could sort of draw a straight line to his ultimate decline and death.

If we think about what mystery entails as a genre, certainly a big part of it is a resolution.

Porter Square Books was the only place I could find that was dog-friendly, work-friendly, and had food. I was there all the time.

Up until the final decade of the nineteenth century, the United States and the United Kingdom did not recognize copyright in each other's creative works.

The intense media coverage of today's campus shootings presents a double edged sword. On the one hand, it gives us a chance to think about and reflect on the causes; on the other hand, in a very small minority of unstable minds, the repeated telling of the stories can be interpreted as glamorous.