352 Quotes by John Grisham

I did manage to ditch my prologue add quotation marks to my dialogue, take out the big words, and I would have cut some more but there’s not enough to cut.

This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it. Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same – bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors.

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.

Since most law-abiding citizens had no contact with the parole system, it was not a priority with the state legislatures. And since most of the state’s prisoners were either poor or black, and unable to use the system to their advantage, it was easy to hit them with harsh sentences and keep them locked up. But for an inmate with a few connections and some cash, the parole system was a marvelous labyrinth of contradictory laws that allowed the Parole Board to pass out favors.

He did smile at her, though, but she did not return the smile. Her teeth were somewhere in the house.

A preconceived conclusion can exist and slant the findings toward that suspect.

I’m concerned. He witnessed something awful, and he might be in shock.

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

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