Matthew Pearl Quotes
Imagine! 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. That is the definition of literature.
Quotes to Explore
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People desire power. I don't know why they want it so. It seems to me it implies a hugely superior intellect which separates them from most of the populace.
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All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
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If we don't change from a world society that worships money and power to one that worships compassion and generosity, I think we'll be extinct by mid-century. I don't say that as an alarmist or as a pessimist.
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One half who graduate from college never read another book.
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I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off... As my friend Julius Lester says, 'A picture book is the essence of an experience.'
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Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.
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Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.
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Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.
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Any character that can't be kept straight, to me, isn't a character who should be in the book – you know, anyone not vivid enough to have a claim on my attention.
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The issue of doing an adaptation of a book is the theater of the mind, and so you always face that.
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My method is, I just sit down and write a book.
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If you really think that ambition, power, lust, desire are not as applicable in the media as in politics or on Wall Street or anywhere else, you're deluding yourself.
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The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.
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I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.
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I've always viewed myself as a brand. When I started 10 years ago, that was very controversial. 'Marketing' and 'PR' were dirty words for the literary world, but that has changed. Once the book is finished, I want as many people as possible to read it.
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Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
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Time dissolves in summer anyway: days are long, weekends longer. Hours get all thin and watery when you are lost in the book you'd never otherwise have time to read. Senses are sharper - something about the moist air and bright light and fruit in season - and so memories stir and startle.
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Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
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I did a book event with a former colleague, Bob Bauer, and was so relieved that he said I got all the CIA stuff right.
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Gender is a key marker of power and powerlessness. Most of the structures of how our world works are biased in terms of men.
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If any of my plays outlive me or get on library book shelves and somehow stay read, all of a sudden it's a testament to "that's part of our culture, that's part of our history."
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The township has done everything within its power to allow the developer to be successful. But we can't force a developer to be successful.
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The ACLU is not just religiously neutral, but staunchly anti-religious. Particularly, anti-Christian.
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Imagine! 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. That is the definition of literature.
