John Grisham Famous Quotes
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And it's often the one you trust the most who'll cut your throat for the right price.
I always try to tell a good story, one with a compelling plot that will keep the pages turning. That is my first and primary goal. Sometimes I can tackle an issue-homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty-and wrap a good story around it.
As well as depressing, but each day I feel like I'm making a small difference. We walked a kid out of prison last week. His parents were waiting by the gate, and everyone was in tears, including me. FYI - one
Since most law-abiding citizens had no contact with the parole system, it was not a priority with the state legislatures. And since most of the state's prisoners were either poor or black, and unable to use the system to their advantage, it was easy to hit them with harsh sentences and keep them locked up. But for an inmate with a few connections and some cash, the parole system was a marvelous labyrinth of contradictory laws that allowed the Parole Board to pass out favors.
And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York, is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted, and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.
Dear Mrs. Black: On seven prior occasions this company has denied your claim in writing. We now deny it for the eighth and final time. You must be stupid, stupid stupid, stupid!
I'm in shock now. I'm not believing this, Mitch. This is like a bad dream, only much worse." "And this is only the beginning.
Answered his knock with a smile, a short one forced through because she was at heart a warm person, not given to the dark mood swings which now plagued her.
Reading is by far the most successful pursuit of happiness.
It was the eyes, the cold black eyes with layers of black wrinkles around them. Great eyes. Unforgettable eyes. His hair was white and thin on top with thickets around the ears, and the whiteness contrasted sharply with the rest of his face. When he spoke, the eyes narrowed and the black pupils glowed fiercely. Sinister eyes. Knowing eyes.
Since the police knew who killed Debbie Carter, they helpfully informed Melvin Hett.
She was forty-one years old, and she was tired. But the fatigue would pass. The old dreams of full-time motherhood and a cushy retirement were forever forgotten.
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects against self-incrimination,
You miss the whole point, Pastor. What I did was wrong, but I couldn't stop myself. Why couldn't I stop myself? Because of what I am. I wasn't born this way. I became a man with a lot of problems, not because of my DNA, but because of what society demanded. Lock ' em up. Punish the hell out of them. And if you make a few monsters along the way, to bad.
Anyone can cook a trout. The real art is in hooking the damned thing.
When witnesses concoct lies, they often miss the obvious.
and quickly shut down completely. Happens
Never trust a white person black people don't like.
He began by talking about daughters and how special they are. How they are different from little boys and need special protection. He told them of his own daughter and the special bond that exists between father and daughter, a bond that could not be explained and should not be tampered with.
If the video camera was loaded with a tape, it was never seen. If Detective Smith made a report of the interview, it was never produced in the legal proceedings that followed.
It wasn't a romance; they were too young for that. Theo did not know of a single thirteen-year-old boy in his class who admitted to having a girlfriend.
After I'd been a lawyer for about five or six years, I started playing around with fiction.
I'm not itching to sue Amazon or Wal-Mart ... they sell a lot of books. But the future is very uncertain with books.
Rich folks can tolerate almost anything, but not rejection.
There was something unfair about a system in which a little kid was brought into a courtroom and surrounded by lawyers arguing and sniping at each other under the scornful eye of a judge, the referee, and somehow in the midst of this barrage of laws and code sections and motions and legal talk the kid was supposed to know what was happening to him. It was hopelessly unfair.
The theory was simple: If a man had enough sense to accumulate a bunch of cash, then he would certainly make a worthy U.S senator.
Look at me," he said, glancing
down at his legs. "A wretched old man in a red monkey suit. A convicted murderer about
to be gassed like an animal. And look at you. A fine young man with a beautiful
education and a bright future. Where in the world did I go wrong? What happened to me?
I've spent my
life hating people, and look what I have to show for it. You, you don't hate anybody. And
look where you're headed. We have the same blood. Why am I here?
In little pockets of conversation, old men were telling stories of ancient floods. Women were talking of about how much rain there'd been in other towns
Paragould, Lepanto, and Manila.
More than 100 people have been sent to death row who were later exonerated because they weren't guilty or fairly tried. Most criminal defendants do not get adequate representation because there are not enough public defenders to represent them. There is a lot that is wrong.
Poverty is a great equalizer
Next, a young black kid was brought in and his handcuffs
The digital age was dragging older lawyers like the Boones into the world of paperless files and storage, and not a minute too soon ... Why destroy so many trees to produce much paper that becomes useless almost as fast as it is filed away?
Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.
I was a lawyer for 10 years, and several of my clients had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, of going to prison. I visited them occasionally.
The sixth and last eulogy was from Roderick, Hugo and Verna's oldest child. He wrote a three-page tribute to his father, and it was read by the reverend. Even Michael Geismar, a cold-blooded Presbyterian, finally succumbed to his emotions. The
This is a free country...you can do almost anything you want.
You count the days and watch the years go by. You tell yourself, and you believe it, that you'd rather just die. You'd rather stare death boldly in the face and say you're ready because whatever is waiting on the other side has to be better than growing old in a six-by-ten cage with no one to talk to. You consider yourself half-dead at best. Please take the other half.
You've watched dozens leave and not return, and you accept the fact that one day they'll come for you. You're nothing but a rat in their lab, a disposable body to be used as proof that their experiment is working. An eye for an eye, each killing must be avenged. You kill enough and you're convinced that killing is good.
You count the days, and then there are none left. You ask yourself on your last morning if you are really ready. You search for courage, but the bravery is fading. When it's over, no one really wants to die.
By the boats in the harbor. What else would you like to know?" "You plan to keep him tomorrow night?" "I get thirty-six hours, once a month. That's 9:00 a.m. tomorrow until 9:00 p.m. Sunday. Do the math. It's not that complicated." The waiter pops in to
Crime? No, he was not. He insisted he knew nothing
You mentioned law school, he said, and this grabbed her attention. They talked about it at length, with Jake careful not to make his description as dreadful as the three-year ordeal itself. Occasionally, like all lawyers, Jake was asked by students if he would recommend the law as a profession. He had never found an honest way to say no, though he had many reservations.
Dear Miss Sam: Thanks so much for your lovely epistle. You've gotten so soft in only three months. Must be all those cookies. If I read you right, you want some assurances that you'll be (1) adored by your bosses, (2) worshipped by your colleagues, (3) appreciated by your clients, (4) virtually guaranteed a partnership which will lead to a long, full, happy life, and (5) given enough office space to make you happy, in spite of the obscene prices per square foot now being demanded by Manhattan landlords (our clients), recession or not.
I have neither the talent nor the patience for the usual mating rituals - the stalking, the accidental encounters, the blind dates, the silly gifts, the awkward phone calls, the referrals from friends, the endless Internet chatting. Nor do I have the guts to go online and lie about myself to strange women. And, I fear I'm forever scorched and gun-shy from the Judith disaster. How can one human possess so much meanness? Naomi
When you wake up tomorrow, another day is behind you. The days add up; the weeks run together; the months become years.
It's nine o'clock in the morning.
An outline is crucial. It saves so much time. When you write suspense, you have to know where you're going because you have to drop little hints along the way. With the outline, I always know where the story is going. So before I ever write, I prepare an outline of 40 or 50 pages.
Focused ultrasound therapy is still in its early stages, still experimental, but there is enough research to date to be very optimistic.
Her father had learned only one thing in prison. Not humility, nor patience, nor understanding...Marshall Kofer had learned to listen, at least to his daughter".
He made a mistake, one that would send him to death row and eventually cost him his freedom for life.
was in the Gray family forever, way back to the early
Like every false rumor, it gained credibility while being repeated, and before long it was practically a fact.
(He) paused for a second and once more marveled at the speed with which one person's private business could be so thoroughly kicked around the neighborhood.
I did manage to ditch my prologue add quotation marks to my dialogue, take out the big words, and I would have cut some more but there's not enough to cut.
Pizzerias in big cities benefit from Italian natives or descendants thereof, people who understand that real pizza comes from Naples where the crusts are thin and the toppings simple. Samantha's favorite was Lazio's, a hole-in-the-wall in Tribeca where the cooks yelled in Italian as they baked the crusts in brick ovens. Like most things in her life these days, Lazio's was far away. So was the pizza. The only place in Brady to get one to go was a sub shop in a cheap strip mall. Pizza Hut, along with most other national chains, had not penetrated deep into the small towns of Appalachia.
I cannot write as well as some people; my talent is in coming up with good stories about lawyers.That is what I am good at.
You just don't understand men, Samantha. Looking is automatic and it's harmless. We all look. Come on.
What's on the outside to prevent their return? They are now convicted felons, a branding they will never be able to shake. The odds were stacked against them to begin with, and now that they're tagged as felons, life in the free world is somehow supposed to improve? These are the real casualties of our wars. The war on drugs. The war on crime. Unintended victims of tough laws passed by tough politicians over the past forty years. One million young black men now warehoused in decaying prisons, idling away the days at taxpayer expense. Our prisons are packed. Our streets are filled with drugs. Who's winning the war?
In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.
the man, Jeff, to step away from the airplane.
Paul's story to have a happier ending - for ourselves
His book, The Dreams of Ada, was published by Viking in April 1987 and was greatly anticipated by the town.
Ten years from now I plan to be sitting here, looking out over my land. I hope I'll be writing books, but if not, I'll be on my pond fishing with my kids. I feel like the luckiest guy I know.
way, please call.
You know, I have a very bad reputation.
Ricky had taught me a few cuss words. I usually practiced them in the woods by the river, then prayed for forgiveness as soon as I was done.
If you're not nervous, son, then something is wrong.
The fear came from the loss of income and the sudden detour in her career. As a third-year associate, she was earning $180,000 a year in base salary, plus a nice bonus. A lot of money, but life in the city had a way of devouring it. Half evaporated in taxes. She had a savings account, one she halfheartedly acknowledged. When you're twenty-nine, single, and free in the city, in a profession where next year's package will exceed this year's salary plus bonus, why worry too much about saving money? She had a friend from Columbia Law who'd been at S&P for five years, had just made junior partner, and would earn about half a million this year. Samantha had been on that track.
Rejection comes easy, because you learn quickly that the worst thing that can happen is to hear the word "no
And it would be over in a flash. The state police are providing
The president had shifted to the 'we' mode now, something he invariably did when a potentially unpopular decision was at hand. For the easy ones, it was always 'I.' When he needed a crutch, and especially when he would need someone to blame, he opened up the decisionmaking process and included Critz.
whispered because Barney heard everything, was to drag a case or a hearing past lunch and into the afternoon when he always took his nap.
Since he does not yet have the name of the killer,
son of a freed slave who took possession of
Just started the new John Grisham book, "The Litigators" and so far it's a pretty good story.
I've always been a John Grisham fan and have read almost everything he has written with the exception of maybe only 2 books.
Cage fighting appeals to the savage instinct in some people, including me, and we're all here for the same reason - to see one fighter annihilate another. We want to see bleeding eyes, gashes across the forehead, choke holds, bone-ripping submissions, and brutal knockout punches that send the corners scrambling for the doctor. Mix in a flood of cheap beer, and you have five thousand maniacs begging for blood.
He was a quiet man, not lonely and not shy, but cerebral and serious.
A battered wife is a married woman until she gets a divorce. Or until she kills the bastard.
and Wally that he planned
Her shoes were short heels, open toe, no straps, red leather, high-class-tart stuff.
After a leisurely slide into second, Joe bounced to his feet, looked at Marichal, shrugged, smiled, and spread his arms as if to say, You throw at me, I'll make you pay.
I learned a long time ago not to waste time analyzing why judges do the things they do.
Do you read them? Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald?"
"Only if I have to. I try to avoid old dead white men.
This is not science fiction. Around the world, 50,000 men with prostate cancer have been treated with focused ultrasound. Over 22,000 women with uterine fibroids (benign tumors of the uterus) have been treated, thus avoiding hysterectomies and infertility. Clinical trials for tumors of the brain, breast, pancreas and liver, as well as Parkinson's disease, arthritis, and hypertension are inching forward at over 225 research sites around the world.
And I'm sure Theo can always find her.
I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.
arrived in the same car half an hour later, and as they were putting on rain slickers an ambulance arrived with a crew of three. From the gravel road, they all strained to see the old sycamore, but after a few seconds of focusing it was apparent there was a man hanging from it. Calvin told them everything he knew. The deputies decided it was best to proceed as if a crime had been committed, and they prohibited the ambulance crew from approaching the scene. Another deputy
They, the lawmakers, were hoodwinked by the insurance companies who are still funding the national tort reform movement, a political crusade that has been wildly successful. Virtually every state has fallen in line with caps on damages and other laws designed to keep folks away from the courthouse. So far, no one has seen a decline in insurance rates. An investigative report by my pal at the Chronicle revealed that 90 percent of our legislators took campaign money from the insurance industry. And this is considered a democracy.
I learned that lesson a long time ago. When you write popular fiction you're going to get bashed by critics.
I had never seen a woman's breasts before, and I doubted if any seven-year-old boy in Craighead County had. Maybe some kid had stumbled upon his mother, but I was certain no boy my age had never had this view.
And they drank heavily, partied with great enthusiasm, and relished the drug culture; they moved in and out and slept around, and this was okay because they defined their own morality. They were fighting for the Mexicans and the redwoods, dammit! They had to be good people!
Why bother with a trial? If the cops can't convict with evidence, they use the media to convict with suspicion.
Relief, fear, and humiliation. Her parents paid for a pricey prep school education in D.C. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown with a degree in political science. She breezed through law school and finished with honors. A dozen megafirms offered her jobs after a federal court clerkship. The first twenty-nine years of her life had seen overwhelming success and little failure. To be discharged in such a manner was crushing. To be escorted out of the building was degrading. This was not just a minor bump in a long, rewarding career.
Please give me fifty more years of work and fun, then an instant death when I'm sleeping.
Sure it will. That's part of it, Abby. It's a cutthroat business where the weak are eaten and the strong get rich. It's a marathon. He who endures wins the gold."
"And dies at the finish line.
life in the free world is somehow supposed to improve? These are the real casualties of our wars. The war on drugs. The war on crime. Unintended victims of tough laws passed by tough politicians over the past forty years. One million young black men now warehoused in decaying prisons, idling away the days at taxpayer expense.
A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure.
Prisons are hate factories, Pastor, and society wants more and more of them.
haven't seen them in some time. I
It's as if we spend our entire lives avoiding Jell-O but it is always there at the end, waiting.
This woman has had the hell beaten out of her.
Monday morning, as Wally