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" 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.' "

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" The first time I remember really being excited about a book was 'The Count of Monte Cristo.' "

" I tend to write in the mornings. "

" 'Presumed Innocent' was written over a six to seven year period with intervals in between where I was figuring out the end of the book and writing other stuff... My life as a writer was carried on against the odds. I had written four unpublished novels by then... as a writer of fiction, I hadn't gotten very far. I just wanted to do it. "

" 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. "

" I don't like re-writing very much. The fourth and the fifth draft - that's too much like work. There's not much inspiration about it, and the lawyerly side kicks in - being very careful and somewhat technical. "

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

" I keep two sentimental mementos on my desk to remind me of two favorite men. There is an inkwell that my Uncle Seymour made, a brass grotesque he mounted on a marble base. And my grandfather's shaving cup is there, used to store pencils and pens. "

" I don't know if a novelist ever fully detaches him- or herself from what they wrote and the way they wrote it. I can watch 'Presumed Innocent' again and again, and I will always be bothered by the same things that will never bother anybody else. "

" People talk of me as being the inventor of the legal thriller. "

" There are a whole lot of little tales told in 'Presumed Innocent,' whether it's about the Hobberly kid, who was an important witness who ends up assassinated, or an accountant named Marcy Lupino, who meets a horrible fate in a state penitentiary. There's less of that in 'Innocent,' and deliberately so. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I read little nonfiction, but I have no boundaries about the fiction I relish. The only unfailing criterion is that I can hitch my heart to the imagined world and read on. "

" 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. "

" 'Black Beauty,' by Anna Sewell, remains a star-dusted memory because my mom read it aloud to my sister and me at night for months. I was no more than 7. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" Los Angeles for many years had operated with a police department that was far smaller than other police departments had in areas of comparable or larger size, New York and Chicago being the most obvious examples. "

" I'm a computer guy, and one of the things I did with the good fortune that 'Presumed Innocent' brought me was to buy one of the very first laptop computers. It weighed about eight and a half pounds, by the way. "

" You know, my mom, who inspired me to be a novelist, I remember her reading 'The Agony and the Ecstasy,' about Michelangelo, and saying, 'No mother would want that for her child, no matter how great the artist.' I have my share of demons, but I am a gregarious sort. "

" 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'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. "

" Like most Americans of my age, I was very impressed by the dynamic capacities of the law, demonstrated by the Civil Rights Movement and then Watergate, animated by Sam Ervin's mantra that no person is above the law. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 think lawyers have a fidelity to the system itself that's always got to be with them, and indeed, most of the defense lawyers I know observe that. "

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

" There are lots of things about Amazon for which they deserve credit. They're innovative. There are lots of very, very happy Amazon customers. I'm not here to dispute that Amazon has been personally good for me or to say that they haven't been, so far, good to their customers. "