The Last Bookaneer Quotes

“Strangers talking over piles of books do not remain strangers for long.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“When they dreamed of turning iron and metal into gold, they called it alchemy. The much more far-fetched dream of turning bound sheafs of plain paper into fortunes, they call publishing.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“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.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“A man's library opens up his character to the world.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“Before long, I had lost my youth and my patience for indulging others. Books were everything in life; books were better than wine.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“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.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“What they don't realize is that sequels are bound to disappoint those who have waited for them.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“They always blamed my reading, you know, for my having fewer friends than my brother and for my weak eyes, never thinking that because I had weak eyes and because I was shy, having a book at the ready rescued me.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“You are always better off to read a book, anyway, than to meet the person behind it.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“exaggeration is the octopus of the English language”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“How odd it must be to go through life believing that a book is a book.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“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.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“I do not seek the mantle of genius. I am an appreciator, an observer, a preposition, and content in that, and that's me in a nutshell.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“Teacher, tender comrade, wife,
A fellow farer true through life,
Heart whole and soul free,
The August father gave to me.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“Stevenson threw back his head and made a slow murmuring sound, "If only I could secure a violent death."
"Pardon?"
"What a fine success!" Stevenson continued, spurring Jack into a canter as he lost himself in his thoughts. "I wish to die in my boots, you see, Mr. Porter. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from this horse into a ditch, Mr. Fergins--aye, to be hanged, rather than pass through the slow dissolution of illnesses!”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“Recall that when the first presses produced copies of the Bible, the scribes who had to spend years at a time on the same work, just as it had been done for centuries, streamed out from the monasteries with quills raised in the air, decrying the work of the devil. When one of the pioneering tradesmen printed certain words in red ink to emphasize them, it was proof that he had used his own blood. That was why the printers’ assistants began to be called “devils.” Soon printers were threatened with burning, and some were indeed put into the fire along with their equipment. From the beginning, the creation of the modern book was viewed as the work of Satan—an attempt to usurp the word of God.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“I was looking for something else in books. I could not really say what, but I think I can say why: a notion started in my own brain was probably wrong, but an answer read in a work of literature would be right. That was my conviction at nineteen, and only in later years would I come to trust myself over a book.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“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.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“He worshipped at the temple of her intellect and I believe it was a comfort to him to know that she left our world with it still shining.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“Beware the camel’s nose—for its whole body will soon follow.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“The same thing as you, the same as she. The same as anyone who has ever been doubted or told to go away. To prove myself better.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“Avoid the Holy Grail, the heroic journeys, the pursuit of a legend--that is not the life of the bookaneer, who must keep his eyes on the ground while other book people live by dreaming.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“What's the use of having eyes if we can't see the world we pass through?”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“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...”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“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.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“People hate the idea of politicians, you see, but love the idea of authors, at least until they meet one.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“When they dreamed of turning iron and metal into gold, they called it alchemy. The much more far-fetched dream of turning bound sheafs of plain paper into fortunes, they call publishing,”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“When I ply the cutlass and make the equivalent of sixpence, idiot conscience applauds me. But if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds by writing, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted. No, to come down covered with mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush. To change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, that makes for a quiet conscience.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer

“that bookshops will one day disappear altogether and be replaced by mail order, that eventually books themselves would be finally and fully buried by that awful foe, so much cheaper and easier to carry: newspapers.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer