“CHARLES. And the courts have declared that your judges were full of corruption and cozenage, fraud and malice. JOAN. Not they. They were as honest a lot of poor fools as ever burned their betters.”

“At the court hearing, Howard Weitzman told the judge that if they were gonna ban ‘Suicide Solution’ and hold me responsible for some poor kid shooting himself, then they’d have to ban Shakespeare, ’cos Romeo and Juliet’s about suicide, too.”

“Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.”

“The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless "reforms" that changed little. Dostoevski once said: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.”

“Honestly. Do guys really think that will fool us? 'Whoa, hi there, John. Gosh, for a second there I thought you were going bald, but I see now that you have a full, lush head of hair. Which grows sideways from left to right in sticky strands. Have I ever been this sexually excited? I think not.”

“...And eventually, he (Charles Manson) testified to an empty court, as Bugliosi had convinced the presiding judge Older, that Manson's hypnotic powers might convince the jury he was innocent.”