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" On the streets, unrequited love and death go together almost as often as in Shakespeare. "
Scott Turow
Streets
Go
Death
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" 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
" The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author. "
Scott Turow
Who
Carry
Burden
" Americans have grown a great deal more realistic about lawyers and the law. I think that's all for the good. A lot of people will say to you these days, 'If you are looking for justice, don't go to a courtroom.' That's just a more realistic perspective on what happens in the legal process. "
Scott Turow
Justice
Good
Perspective
" I love criminal law. It must be the Dostoyevskian streak in me. I'm fascinated by the accumulation of forces that make people behave in ways that everybody else hates. "
Scott Turow
People
Criminal
Law
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Law
Late
Consciousness
" 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
" '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 I had written four unpublished novels by then...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. "
Scott Turow
Writing
End
Book
" I tend to start with a kernel, a vague concept, and just begin to write things down - notes about a character, lines of dialogue, descriptive passages about a place. One idea fires another. I do that for about a year. By then there's a story, and I'll go on to a complete first draft that sews many of those ragtag pieces together. "
Scott Turow
Place
Start
Together
" 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 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
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Love
Small
Life
" 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
" 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
" Widespread public access to knowledge, like public education, is one of the pillars of our democracy, a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry. "
Scott Turow
Like
Knowledge
Education
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Movement
Credit
Worth
" People talk of me as being the inventor of the legal thriller. "
Scott Turow
Being
Thriller
Talk
" I write based on powerful inner impulses, and those seem to shift over time. "
Scott Turow
Shift
Over
Powerful
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Always
I Can
Innocent
" 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
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Law
Age
Rights
" '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
" 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
" The great break of my literary career was going to law school. "
Scott Turow
Great
Law
Law School
" 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. "
Scott Turow
Lawyer
Literature
Life
" I spent four of my five years at Stanford writing a novel I was unable to sell. "
Scott Turow
Years
Writing
Four
" 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
" 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 tend to write in the mornings. "
Scott Turow
Mornings
Write
Tend
" All my novels are about the ambiguities that lie beneath the sharp edges of the law. "
Scott Turow
Edges
Sharp
Law
" I practise law almost every day. Exclusively criminal work these days. "
Scott Turow
Almost
Day
Every Day