Matthew Pearl Quotes
-
I still have my high school copy of the collected Poe - missing its covers and pretty worse for the wear.
-
I love writing shorter fiction.
-
Though a woman tempted man to eat, my dear Longfellow," said Holmes, "you never hear of Eve having to do with his drinking, for he took to that of his own notion.
-
Romance is not an idea, but a moment. An unspoken glance when someone looks into your eyes and knows exactly who you are, what you need.
-
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.
-
I prefer the society of one faithful person to an association of rapid talkers, who more than anything else seek admiration from one another.
-
He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death.
-
One important idea I hope is reflected in 'The Poe Shadow' is that fiction can add as much to history as nonfiction does.
-
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.
-
As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.
-
The book I'm working on next, which will be my fifth, returns to literary history. I really do love literary history, and I have plenty more ideas on it.
-
Poe was plagued and haunted most of all by something pretty banal: poverty. Probably the most eccentric decision in life was to become a writer in an age when making a living at it was nearly impossible.
-
What's most explosive about historical fiction is to use the fictional elements to pressure the history to new insights.
-
The novel has always been a contradictory form. Here is a long form narrative mainly read originally by consumers who were only newly literate or limited in their literacy. The novel ranked below poetry, essay and history in prestige for a long time.
-
Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.
-
Remember that there are two things in this life that are never worth crying about: what can be cured and what cannot be cured.
-
Strangers talking over piles of books do not remain strangers for long.
-
...and luckily I have enough in my head to balance what is wanting in my back.
-
There's a remarkable power about reading together, reading collectively, that's brought out by reading groups.
-
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.