Matthew Pearl Quotes

exaggeration is the octopus of the English language

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...

It is not when a man is at the end of his life, but when a man is at the end of his profession, that his soul shows itself.

Books do pretend ...but squeezed in between is even more that is true—without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?

'Pity without rigor would be cowardly egotism, mere sentimentality.'