“Don't say you're sorry, ask me how much it cost.”

“Do you prefer fermented or distilled?This is a trick question. It doesn’t matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer’s interview, writing is a lonely job, and spirits are the lubricant of the lonely. You might say all drinking is supposed to be social but there’s a difference, at one in the morning while you’re hunched over your computer, between opening up a bottle of Chardonnay and pouring two-fingers of bourbon into a tumbler. A gin martini, of course, splits the difference nicely, keeping you from feeling like a deadline reporter with a smoldering cigarette while still reminding you that your job is to be interesting for a living. Anyone who suggests you can make a martini with vodka, by the way, is probably in need of electroconvulsive therapy.”

“I took a breath. Pictured the bed waiting for me upstairs. Then retreated to the lobbybar alone and ordered an ice-cold gin martini, a small signal to myself that my work was done. I held the glass, its inverted construction an insult to gravity and the order of things. Just like our Movement, from the outside the balance of power seems all wrong. But hold a martini glass in your hand and you know instinctively that it is just right.”

“Jesus taught in parables for a reason.”

“Wisdom is the contant questioning of where you are. And when you stop wanting to know, you're dea. You're walking, but you're dead.”

“Don't go growing a conscience on me," I said. "I've been down that road. It doesn't lead you to anything good.”

“Well, did he do it?"She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt.”