106 Quotes by Matthew Pearl

These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves.

'Do not ask what brings Dante to man but what brings man to Dante-to personally enter his sphere, though it is forever severe and unforgiving.'

People hate the idea of politicians, you see, but love the idea of authors, at least until they meet one.

Writers must write and they suffer if they don’t. Then they suffer if they do.

Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on...

A man was leaning idly against an elm. ... The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at him with the familiar, insatiable gleam of the literary admirer.

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.

An obscure character by the name of Belial. He is interpreted as a minion of the devil by some scholars, but that is wrong. It is ignorance. The name means, literally speaking, 'one who cannot be yoked,' and it is really every one of us who takes control of our own destiny while others blow in the wind. We may be punished for it, but we would never do it another way. We are all Belials.

'Yes, we rather condemn people for eternity without the courtesy of informing them.'