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" Amazon can't be all good or all bad. I don't think that everything they do is evil; they've given a lot of authors access. "

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" Musicians make up for the copies of their songs that get pirated by performing live. I don't think there will be as many people showing up to hear me read as to hear Beyonce sing. We need to make sure piracy is dealt with effectively. "

" The American preoccupation with the law, which is certainly not past, was at its zenith in 1995. The 1980s, the late 1980s, had sort of begun to percolate up to public consciousness this enormous interest in the law. "

" I always say, and I mean it, that the great break of my literary career was when I went to law school. "

" Certainly, when I was a boy, people liked to believe that lawyers were kind of pillars of goodness of the likes of Atticus Finch in 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' "

" Only in the mystery novel are we delivered final and unquestionable solutions. The joke to me is that fiction gives you a truth that reality can't deliver. "

" The great break of my literary career was going to law school. "

" In re-reading 'Presumed Innocent,' the one thing that struck me - and I re-read the book four different times in writing 'Innocent,' interested in different things each time - but I did think there were a couple of extra loops in the plot that I probably didn't need. The other thing that sort of amazed me was how discursive the book was. "

" I hate second-guessing other lawyers because I know that I've tried and lost cases, and somebody could sit there and say, 'Should have done it this way,' and they'd have been right. "

" I tend to write in the mornings. "

" I write based on powerful inner impulses, and those seem to shift over time. "

" I was one of those kids who never wanted to be anything but a novelist. And I don't know a lot of people who truly live the life that they dreamed of. "

" If life's lessons could be reduced to single sentences, there would be no need for fiction. "

" I think one of the blessings that I've had in watching, you know, films be made now from four of my books is to realize that it's a separate thing. It's a separate work. "

" I'm an ambitious person, and Harvard makes me feel successful, just having gotten in here. That's the ugly side of why I'm proud of being at Harvard Law School. Another reason is because there's a spirit of serious intellectual endeavor here. "

" I adore the company of other writers because they are so often lively minds and, frequently, blazingly funny. And of course, we get each other in a unique way. "

" I trained as a writer before I became a lawyer. I was headed for a life as an English professor, but that just wasn't me. I'm not a scholar; I didn't have a scholar's attitude toward literature. "

" Because I spend so much time traveling, I tend to do most of my reading on the same iPad on which I write. For me, it's words, not paper, that matter most in the end. This practice has had the additional benefit of greatly reducing the time I spend storming through the house, defaming the mysterious forces who 'hid my book.' "

" I'm of that generation of Jews still deeply influenced by the Holocaust. Certainly the notion that the state power to kill can be subject to such extraordinary abuse is always lurking beneath the surface for me. Certainly my experience and identity as a Jew is there. "

" Being a lawyer, even in a city as large as Chicago, is like being a citizen of a small town. I love watching the life of the town play out. You know, the rise and fall of individual lives in the entire community is just fascinating to me. "

" Generally, I like to write in the morning before all the dust of dreams has blown away. Beforehand, I read two papers, cook my breakfast and then settle down in front of the word processor, usually by 8 A.M. I'll write, and then check e-mail or voicemail when things stall. "

" The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author. "

" The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity. "

" The truth of the matter is that the people who succeed in the arts most often are the people who get up again after getting knocked down. Persistence is critical. "

" I grew up on the north side of Chicago, in West Rogers Park, an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. When I was 13, my parents moved to Winnetka, Illinois, an upper class, WASPy suburb where Jews - as well as Blacks and Catholics - were unwelcome on many blocks. I suffered the spiritual equivalent of whiplash. "

" The one thing I would like more credit for is being part of a movement which involves recognising the importance of plot and asserting that books of literary worth could be written that had plots. "

" All my novels are about the ambiguities that lie beneath the sharp edges of the law. "

" I am a big believer in the fact that all authors really write only one book. "

" The hardest part is not to repeat yourself. I don't really believe my core obsessions are going to change, but you need to look for ways to express them that are different. The main reason for doing that is not to bore yourself, and obviously, I don't want to bore readers. "

" I've become President of the Author's Guild, and, in part because they thought I had to know what I was talking about and also as a sort of coronation present, they got me an iPad. And I have to tell you, I'm crazy about it. It's got some bugs, but it's basically replaced my laptop. I'm very happy with it. "

" I spent four of my five years at Stanford writing a novel I was unable to sell. "