Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I always say, and I mean it, that the great break of my literary career was when I went to law school. "
Scott Turow
Career
Always
Great
Related Quotes:
" My sister was a twin, and the other baby died in childbirth, and I was three at the time, and I always kind of thought it haunted me. It was a weird thing. My dad was an ob-gyn, and so it was confusing that the other baby didn't come home from the hospital. "
Scott Turow
Me
Home
Baby
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Reading
Child
Great
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Serious
Ugly
School
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Class
Chicago
Parents
" I never really felt free to talk a lot about my family life because I don't want to sacrifice anybody else's privacy. If you look through the archives, you will see, for example, no pictures of my children. That is not because I don't love them. I think I've been a really good dad; at least, I try to be. "
Scott Turow
Love
Life
Good
" 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.' "
Scott Turow
Boy
Lawyers
Goodness
" Postmodernism cost literature its audience. "
Scott Turow
Cost
Literature
Audience
" The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity. "
Scott Turow
Purpose
Ambiguity
Narrative
" 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.' "
Scott Turow
Time
Reading
Words
" I spent four of my five years at Stanford writing a novel I was unable to sell. "
Scott Turow
Years
Writing
Four
" 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. "
Scott Turow
People
Truth
Up
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Think
You
Work
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Los Angeles
New York
Police
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Writing
Book
Innocent
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Me
Power
Identity
" '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. "
Scott Turow
Mom
Night
Sister
" 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. "
Scott Turow
People
Live
Me
" 'Reversible Errors' is about the limits of the law to define who committed ultimate evil, to define what ultimate evil is, to allow the million arbitrary factors to make this a meaningful punishment, and finally to say, 'Are we really accomplishing what we wanted to accomplish? Are those anxieties relieved?' I don't think so. "
Scott Turow
Think
Accomplish
Evil
" All my life, I've wanted to write a book inspired by my relationship with my grandfather. Basically, my grandfather was a guy who everybody in the family regarded as disagreeable at best. But I loved him intensely. He was wonderful to me. "
Scott Turow
Relationship
Life
Family
" 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. "
Scott Turow
World
Heart
Only
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Fate
Important
Innocent
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Me
Desk
Grandfather
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Lawyers
Lost
Say
" I've never been under the illusion that everybody on death row is innocent - far from it. My own guess is upwards of 90 percent are guilty. But a ten percent error rate if that's what it is, or even five percent, is really way too high. "
Scott Turow
Illusion
Own
Innocent
" The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author. "
Scott Turow
Who
Carry
Burden
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Crazy
Happy
Know
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Breakfast
Dreams
Morning
" I am a big believer in the fact that all authors really write only one book. "
Scott Turow
Fact
Write
Book
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Me
Credit
Good
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Live
Kids
Know