Matthew Pearl Quotes
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.

Quotes to Explore
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It is time Australian Muslims stop being treated as negotiable citizens in their own country. It is time people stop 'tolerating' us, presuming some right to decide if we have a place in our own home.
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Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way.
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I had a major bug for cities and for paintings and literature and all the things I thought went on in cities.
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When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.
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I put pressure on myself all the time. I felt it so much with 'Sax,' but I had to just let go and enjoy it.
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With a lot of help from my high school teachers, I went to college and became a medical tech at a clinic outside Kansas City.
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Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.
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I was in prison with pretty much the who's who of the jihadist and Islamist scene of Egypt at the time, and Egypt was the cradle of Islamism for the world - it's where it began and where jihadism began as well.
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I was on a well-beaten path of actors - what we all call 'the Law and Order route'. I spent two years of auditioning for everything... and then 'The Wire' came up.
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I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.
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Red Dust was about the late 1980s; it was a time of burgeoning hopes and opening up and people searching for new ways.
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It is high time that the Palestinian people restore their freedom and independence. It is high time that the decades, the long decades of suffering and pain would stop.
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I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
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I love acting so much that I have to have that as much as I have to have my time with my kid.
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Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a pepper corn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky.
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I wrote small stories here and there, then bigger ones. Some were even written for money. I signed up for a writing class and snuck my first assignment on a yellow legal pad in a partner's office while he read through my memo.
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A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
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Tales of cheating on school and college tests are rife. There have been instances where teachers have given students test answers in order to make themselves look good on their performance reviews. Mentors who should be teaching the opposite are sending a message that lying and cheating are acceptable.
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The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a sh*t.
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I don't know anyone in the public eye who has not made a mistake and said something in a manner that does not truly reflect their intentions.
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I wanted to go to a good college, and my mind was set on Wellesley.
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I made a decision to live outside the city in northern California. My agent said to me, 'Kid, you're going to make a mint in television movies.' He positioned me, and we picked really good projects, and I cornered that market. They were 20-day projects.
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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.