John Grisham

“You know, I have a very bad reputation.”

“I have a plan, one I've been plotting for years now. It is my only way out.”

“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.”

“You need some coffee, don't you?""Yes, I've only had a gallon.”

“Good God, Keith.""Yes, I've talked to Him too and I'm still waiting on his Guidance...”

“He's busy taking the fifth”

“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 guess under the right circumstances, a man will do just about anything.”

“We were invincible because we were eighteen and stupid.”

“I'm here to tell you, separate was never equal.”

“I don't start a novel until I have lived with the story for awhile to the point of actually writing an outline and after a number of books I've learned that the more time I spend on the outline the easier the book is to write. And if I cheat on the outline I get in trouble with the book.”

“Any lawyer worth his salt knew the first offer had to be rejected.”

“The reason is obvious. You're my grandfather, okay. Like it or not, you're who you are and i'm who i am. And i'm here right now, so what are we going to do about it? -Adam Cayhall-”

“Today was the worst day of his professional life, but tomorrow would be better.”

“Poverty is a great equalizer”

“Once you've seen a pretty girl naked, you feel a certain attachment to her.”

“My dad's filthy rich, and even though we're Irish Catholic I'm an only child. I've got more money than you do so I'll work for free. No charge. A free law clerk for three weeks. I'll do all the research, typing, answering the phone. I'll even carry your briefcase and make the coffee. I was afraid you'd want to be a a law partner.No I'm a woman, and I'm in the South. I know my place.”

“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?”

“With murder, the victim is gone, and not forced to deal with what happened to her. The family must deal with it, but not the victim. But rape is much worse. The victim has a lifetime of coping, trying to understand, of asking questions, and the worst part, of knowing the rapist is still alive and may someday escape or be released. Every hour of every day, the victim thinks of the rape and asks herself a thousand questions. She relives it, step by step, minute by minute, and it hurts just as bad. Perhaps the most horrible crime of all is the violent rape of a child. A woman who is raped has a pretty good idea why it happened. Some animal was filled with hatred, anger and violence. But a child? A ten-year-old child? Suppose you're a parent. Imagine yourself trying to explain to your child why she was raped. Imagine yourself trying to explain why she cannot bear children.”

“The sky had cleared, and now the sun was overhead, already baking the wet ground so that you could see the humidity drifting lazily above the cotton stalks.”

“[you’ll acquire] A certain amount of cynicism. This business works on you. When you were in law school you had some noble idea what a lawyer should be. A champion of individual rights; a defender of the Constitution; a guardian of the oppressed; an advocate for your client’s principles. Then after you practice for six months you realize you were nothing but hired guns. Mouthpieces for sale to the highest bidder, available to anybody, any crook, any sleazebag with enough money to pay your outrageous fees. Nothing shocks you. It’s supposed to be an honorable profession, but you’ll meet so many crooked lawyers you’ll want to quit and find an honest job. Yeah Mitch, you’ll get cynical. And it’s sad, really.”

“Anyone can cook a trout. The real art is in hooking the damned thing.”

“I was hurting, too. How could she have done such a terrible thing? She was my friend. She treated me like a confidant, and she protected me like a big sister. I loved Tally, and now she had run off with a vicious killer.”

“Once again, I was reminded that Tally was the prettiest girl I'd ever met, and when she smiled at me my mind went blank. Once you've seen a pretty girl naked, you feel a certain attachment to her.”

“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.”

“I was tired of secrets, tired of seeing things I was not supposed to see. And so I just cried.”

“Once again I had asked an innocent question, and because of it, I was banished from the conversation.”

“I wished i were seven feet tall. I'd hop up there and attack ol' Samson while the crowd went wild. I'd whip him good, send him flying, and become the biggest hero in Black Oak. But, for now, I could only boo him.”

“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.”

“How often would I have the chance to see a pretty girl bathing? I could recall no specific prohibition from the church or the Scriptures, though I knew it was wrong. But maybe it wasn't terribly sinful.”

“I was on the verge of tears, so I turned and ran past the trailer and along the field road until I was safely out of their sight. Then I ducked into the cotton and waited for friendly voices. I sat on the hot ground, surrounded by stalks four feet tall, and I cried, something I really hated to do.”

“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.”

“He'd had his career, his triumphs. Success had brought him nothing but misery; he couldn't handle it. Success had thrown him in the gutter”

“You wired the kid," Truemann said meekly to no one in particular."Why not? No crime. You're the FBI, remember. You boys run more wire than AT&T."[Reggie Love]”

“You advised him not to get a lawyer, giving as one of your reasons the opinion that lawyers are a pain in the ass. Gentlemen, the pain is here.-Reggie Love”

“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.”

“It's mafia,Mitch and illegal as hell.”

“It's amazing how lies grow. You start with a small one that seems easy to cover, then you get boxed in and tell another one. Then another. People believe you at first, then they act upon your lies, and you catch yourself wishing you'd simply told the truth.”

“But [Stanley Wade] instead removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. They were moist not from fear but from the harsh reality of being confronted by one of his victims. How many others were out there? Why had he chosen to spend his career screwing these people?~from "Michael's Room"~”

“He stared at the cheap linoleum between his shoes and admitted to himself that once again he had fallen into the trap that often snared so many of the educated and upper-class locals when they convinced themselves that the rest of the population was stupid and ignorant. Cranwell was smarter than most lawyers in town, and infinitely more prepared.”

“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!”

“Life on the run was filled with dreams, some at night during sleep, real dreams, and some when the mind was awake but drifting. Most were terrifying, the nightmares of the shadows growing bolder and larger. Others were pleasant wishes of a rosy future, free of the past. These were rare, Patrick had learned. Life on the run was life in the past. There was no closure”

“Like a snake creeping through the undergrowth, I sneak into the law school well past noon and hours after both of my scheduled classes have broken up.”

“F. Franklin the Fourth has a job with a firm rich in heritage, money and pretentiousness, a firm vastly superior to Brodnax and Speer. His sidekicks at the moment are W. Harper Whittenson, an arrogant little snot who will, thankfully, leave Memphis and practice with a mega-firm in Dallas; J. Townsend Gross, who has accepted a position with another huge firm; and James Straybeck, a sometimes friendly sort who's suffered three years of law school without an initial to place before his name or numerals to stick after it. With such a short name, his future as a big-firm lawyer is in jeopardy. I doubt if he'll make it.”

“Never trust a white person black people don’t like.”

“You count the years until you get a varsity jersey, then you're a hero, an idol, a cocky bastard because in this town you can do no wrong. You win and win and you're the king of your own little world, then poof, it's gone. You play your last game and everybody cries. You can't believe it's over. Then another team comes right behind you and you're forgotten.”

“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.”

“He's a two-faced, cutthroat, dirt-dumb, chicken shit, slimy, little bastard with a bright future in politics.”

“Privileged people don't march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy.”

“Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.”