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
-
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.
-
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.
-
I had a major bug for cities and for paintings and literature and all the things I thought went on in cities.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Red Dust was about the late 1980s; it was a time of burgeoning hopes and opening up and people searching for new ways.
-
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.
-
I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
-
I love acting so much that I have to have that as much as I have to have my time with my kid.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Through therapy and a lot of thinking and writing my memoirs, I've been able to use my life as a lesson.
-
While some who downplay Christ's divinity have imagined Jesus as a great social worker 'being kind to old ladies, small dogs and little children,' orthodox Christianity has not wanted Jesus to have a political message.
-
The blessing that this film business has given me is that when I walk into a school I automatically have everyone's attention. They want to hear what the guy from 'Con Air' and 'Desperado' has to say.
-
I was 20 when my daughter was born, and making all these plans during my wife's pregnancy. I was going to be the perfect father. Once she was born, it was suddenly, 'Oh, my God! I'm a parent!'
-
You get a realisation at some point in your career that whatever it is you do, you can no longer continue to do it. You just realise you can't put out the same records forever.
-
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.