Matthew Pearl Quotes

I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.

I don't think any novelist should be concerned with literature.

When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else.

A reviewer's lot is not always an easy one. I can remember flogging myself to finish Harold Brodkey's 'The Runaway Soul' despite the novel's consummate, unmitigated tedium.

The problem with being a writer is that some readers tend to think that anything that comes out of a character's mouth is you talking.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

I wish I had read more and majored in literature rather than theatre. I think I would have been a better artist for it. I am trying to play catch-up now.

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not?

After I'd been a lawyer for about five or six years, I started playing around with fiction.

The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.

I do have the sense that, although there may be no one way to write a novel, there are many novelists who are in fact part of some sort of larger literary community, whether in the form of a writing group or an MFA program, to name two of the more common forms.

Now you mustn't think that I don't have any ideas for novels in my head. I've got ideas for ten novels in my head. But with every idea I have, I already foresee the wrong novels I would write, because I also have critical ideas in my head; I've got a full theory of the perfect novel, and that's what stumps me.

Novelists should be like scientists, dissecting the cadaver.

A novelist can never be his own reader, except when he is ridding his manuscript of syntax errors, repetitions, or the occasional superfluous paragraph.

A whole bunch of agents and editors looked at my stories, and they all said, in effect, 'You're a pretty good writer and you should probably get these published; when you grow up and write a novel, get in touch.'

Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

Part of my problem as a young writer was that I was too much a New Yorker, always second-guessing the 'market.' I became so discouraged that I decided to write something that would please me alone - that became my sole criterion. And that was when I wrote 'Forgetting Elena,' the first novel I got published.

There is a whole industry in America of people who want to write, and those who teach it. Even if the students don't end up writing, what's good about them taking the courses is, they become great readers, learning to appreciate the writing.

Oh you know, I've been writing a novel.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

Approaching my second novel was, admittedly, a bit of a struggle. But having an amazing team at Atheneum Books, especially my very patient, brilliant editor Namrata Tripathi, took a stressful situation and turned it into a really great learning experience for me.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.