John Grisham quotes:

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  • I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

  • Sometimes I can tackle an issue -homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty - and wrap a good story around it. These are the best books, the ones with a story and a message.

  • My mum was never too keen on TV, so we kids all went to the library and got books out. Right from the start, I loved the works of Mark Twain. Every time I read about Tom Sawyer, I'd go out and do something low-level naughty, just like him.

  • Quite often I can be in a bookshop, standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham, yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.

  • I grew up in a very small, close-knit, Southern Baptist family, where everything was off-limits. So I couldn't wait to get to college and have some fun. And I did for the first two years. And I regret a lot of it, because my grades were in terrible shape. I never got in serious trouble, except for my grades.

  • Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.

  • I always try to tell a good story, one with a compelling plot that will keep the pages turning. That is my first and primary goal. Sometimes I can tackle an issue-homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty-and wrap a good story around it.

  • There's always such a rush to judgment. It makes a fair trial hard to get.

  • I give off rather mixed messages about the law. On the one hand, I can honestly say I don't miss working in a law office. On the other hand I do enjoy watching the law and while the profession may have its problems, I have sold zillions of books out of magnifying them.

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

  • More than 100 people have been sent to death row who were later exonerated because they weren't guilty or fairly tried. Most criminal defendants do not get adequate representation because there are not enough public defenders to represent them. There is a lot that is wrong.

  • I'm not itching to sue Amazon or Wal-Mart... they sell a lot of books. But the future is very uncertain with books.

  • And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York, is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted, and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.

  • Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story.

  • Keeping a guy in prison costs 50,000 bucks a year. Executing one costs a couple million.

  • The first thing my family did when we moved was join the local church. The second was to go to the library and get library cards.

  • My mum was never too keen on TV, so we kids all went to the library and got books out. Right from the start, I loved the works of Mark Twain. Every time I read about Tom Sawyer, I'd go out and do something low-level naughty, just like him."

  • 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.

  • It's hard to read good fiction when I am writing, because if it is really good I catch myself sort of inadvertently imitating a great writer.

  • Prisons are hate factories, Pastor, and society wants more and more of them."

  • Most criminal defendants do not get adequate representation because there are not enough public defenders to represent them. There is a lot that is wrong.

  • Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.

  • Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn't sure how to start.

  • I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.

  • judge not that ye be not judged

  • 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.

  • Wrongful convictions happen every week in every state in this country. And they happen for all the same reasons. Sloppy police work. Eyewitness identification is the most - is the worst type almost. Because it's wrong about half the time. Think about that."

  • Of cocaine wrapped neatly in foil and seemingly untouched. Under"

  • The worst letters come from retired high school English teachers. They will literally take a book and pick it to pieces and send me 14 pages of notes.

  • We've sent 130 men to death row to be executed in this country, at least 130 that we know of, who have later have been exonerated because they were either innocent, or they were not fairly tried. That's 130 people that we've locked down on death row. And they've spent years there.

  • Life is short..Live to the fullest..

  • Critics should find meaningful work.

  • The company later went broke, and of course all blame was directed at the lawyers. Not once did I hear any talk that maybe a trace of mismanagement could in any way have contributed to the bankruptcy.

  • I have learned not to read reviews. Period. And I hate reviewers. All of them, or at least all but two or three. Life is much simpler ignoring reviews and the nasty people who write them. Critics should find meaningful work.

  • I earned my first steady paycheck watering rose bushes at a nursery for a dollar an hour.

  • I'm not in favor of the death penalty. But I'm in favor of locking these people away in maximum security units where they can never get out. They can never escape. They can never be paroled. Lock the bad ones away. But you gotta rethink everybody else.

  • 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.

  • One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers.

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

  • No star fades faster than that of a high school athlete.

  • Some people have more guts than brains.

  • ... answered his knock with a smile, a short one forced through because she was at heart a warm person, not given to the dark mood swings which now plagued her.

  • Four rehabs meant a fifth was somewhere down the road.

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

  • Wrongful convictions happen every week in every state in this country. And they happen for all the same reasons. Sloppy police work. Eyewitness identification is the most - is the worst type almost. Because it's wrong about half the time. Think about that.

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

  • There are few things in life worse than a long-winded lawyer.

  • Jesus preached more and taught more about helping the poor and the sick and the hungry than he did about heaven and hell. Shouldn't that tell us something?

  • The mother of a trophy wife is not automatically a trophy mother-in-law.

  • Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.

  • I was a lawyer for 10 years - a short time, but it molded me into who I am. My clients were little people fighting big corporations, so it was a natural thing to not only represent the little guy but also to pull for him - it's the American way.

  • I learned that lesson a long time ago. When you write popular fiction you're going to get bashed by critics.

  • I always do book signings with the same blue pen. That way, if I add a personalised message to a book I've already signed, it'll be in the same colour as my signature.

  • Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

  • Right from the start, I loved the works of Mark Twain. Every time I read about Tom Sawyer, I'd go out and do something low-level naughty, just like him.

  • We are extremely private, and we really got sort of ambushed by the notoriety.

  • The Deep South has the friendliest people in the world. They will do anything for you. They also want to know what's going on and won't hesitate to ask questions.

  • Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

  • I've had nine of my books adapted to film, and almost all were enjoyable. I've been very lucky with Hollywood, and look forward to more movies being adapted. But I don't get involved in that process. I know nothing about making movies and I stay away from it and hope for the best.

  • In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.

  • 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.

  • You live your life today, Not tommorow, and certainly not yesterday.

  • When witnesses concoct lies, they often miss the obvious.

  • If you're gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.

  • I'm alone and outgunned, scared and inexperienced, but I'm right.

  • Live your life the way you want. You'll figure it out.

  • An outline is crucial. It saves so much time. When you write suspense, you have to know where you're going because you have to drop little hints along the way. With the outline, I always know where the story is going. So before I ever write, I prepare an outline of 40 or 50 pages.

  • I struggle with racism every day

  • When you work at street level you never know who's going to walk through your door.

  • You burn a man's pickup, and he's ready for war.

  • In one long glorious acknowledgment of failure, he laid himself bare before God.

  • I don't want to force my politics on my readers.

  • I guess under the right circumstances, a man will do just about anything.

  • I grew up in a very small, close-knit, Southern Baptist family, where everything was off-limits. So I couldn't wait to get to college and have some fun. And I did for the first two years. And I regret a lot of it, because my grades were in terrible shape.

  • A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure.

  • We learned after the first semester in law school that it's best never to discuss exams. If notes are compared afterwards, you become painfully aware of things you missed.

  • I've sold too many books to get good reviews anymore. There's a lot of jealousy, because [reviewers] think they can write a good novel or a best-seller and get frustrated when they can't. I've learned to despise them.

  • My decision to become a lawyer was irrevocably sealed when I realized my father hated the legal profession.

  • He's my client, and he's counting on me. I'll take him, warts and all.

  • I learned that lesson a long time ago. When you write popular fiction, you're going to get bashed by critics.

  • I don't feel stupid, just inadequate. After three years of studying the law, I'm very much aware of how little I know.

  • I looked at her and tried to speak, but all I could think about was how shocked she'd be if I said what I was thinking.

  • I'm a Christian, and those beliefs occasionally come out in the books.

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

  • After I'd been a lawyer for about five or six years, I started playing around with fiction.

  • I don't usually eat breakfast. I prefer to be asleep during the hours that it is served.

  • The coffee arrives, and we backslide into what lawyers do best---talking about other lawyers.

  • All students enter law school with a certain amount of idealism and desire to serve the public, but after three years of brutal competition we care for nothing but the right job with the right firm where we can make partner in seven years and earn big bucks.

  • We cuss them because we're not good enough for them. We hate them because they wouldn't look at us, couldn't be bothered to give us an interview. I guess there's a Trent & Brent in every city, in every field. I didn't make it and I don't belong, so I'll just go through life hating them.

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

  • How could homosexuals possibly srew up the sanctity of marriage any worse than heterosexuals?

  • Poverty is a great equalizer

  • Ten years from now I plan to be sitting here, looking out over my land. I hope I'll be writing books, but if not, I'll be on my pond fishing with my kids. I feel like the luckiest guy I know.

  • 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.

  • It's as if we spend our entire lives avoiding Jell-O but it is always there at the end, waiting.

  • I cannot write as well as some people; my talent is in coming up with good stories about lawyers.That is what I am good at.

  • My name became a brand, and I'd love to say that was the plan from the start. But the only plan was to keep writing books. And I've stuck to that ever since.

  • Please give me fifty more years of work and fun, then an instant death when I'm sleeping.

  • I'm being followed so much I'm causing traffic jams.

  • 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 didn't dare think of the future; the past was still happening.

  • Because I was single, there was a chance I was a homosexual. Because I went to Syracuse, wherever that was, then I was probably a Communist. Or worse, a Liberal. Because I was from Memphis, I was a subversive intent on embarrassing Ford County.

  • Michael Harvey should be read by all.

  • The good thing about writing fiction is that you can get back at people.

  • Prisons are hate factories, Pastor, and society wants more and more of them.

  • I was a lawyer for 10 years, and several of my clients had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, of going to prison. I visited them occasionally.

  • Mr. Buckley, let me explain it this way. And I'll do so very carefully & slowly so that even you will understand it. If I was the sheriff, I would not have arrested him. If I was on the grand jury, I would not have indicted him. If I was the judge, I would not try him. If I was the D.A., I would not prosecute him. If I was on the trial jury, I would vote to give him a key to the city, a plaque to hang on his wall, & I would send him home to his family. And, Mr. Buckley, if my daughter is ever raped, I hope I have the guts to do what he did.

  • I am currently reading, "The Broker" by John Grisham. it is alittle slow to start so I will have to let you know if it gets better

  • It's a game. We tax lawyers teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich-and the IRS keeps changing the rules so we can keep getting rich teaching them.

  • And they drank heavily, partied with great enthusiasm, and relished the drug culture; they moved in and out and slept around, and this was okay because they defined their own morality. They were fighting for the Mexicans and the redwoods, dammit! They had to be good people!

  • I've written 17 novels, and I've found out that fiction can't keep up with real life.

  • 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.

  • Every morning I wake at 6am or 6.30am, champing at the bit.

  • She was pondering the option of law school, the great American baby-sitter for directionless postgrads.

  • I was a lawyer for 10 years - a short time, but it molded me into who I am.

  • Reading is by far the most successful pursuit of happiness.

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