“In the mind of all, fiction, in the logical sense, has been the coin of necessity;—in that of poets of amusement—in that of the priest and the lawyer of mischievous immorality in the shape of mischievous ambition,—and too often both priest and lawyer have framed or made in part this instrument.”

“War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.”

“The law is so complex and voluminousthat no one, not even the most knowledgeable lawyer, can understand itall. Moreover, lawyers and legal scholars have not gone out of their wayto make the law accessible to the ordinary person. Just the opposite: Legalprofessionals, like the priests of some obscure religion, too often try tokeep the law mysterious and inaccessible.”

“There was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching.”

“In grammar school he’d had an old priest as his religion teacher. “Truth is light,” the priest had said one day.Montalbano, never very studious, had been a mischievous pupil, always sitting in the last row.“So that must mean that if everyone in the family tells the truth, they save on the electric bill.”

“In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.”