149 Quotes by Scott Turow

I really do believe that chance favours a prepared mind. Wallace Stegner, who was one of my teachers when I was at Stanford, preached that writing a novel is not something that can be done in a sprint. That it's a marathon. You have to pace yourself. He himself wrote two pages every day and gave himself a day off at Christmas. His argument was at the end of a year, no matter what, you'd got 700 pages and that there's got to be something worth keeping.

At the end of the day, perhaps the best argument against capital punishment may be that it is an issue beyond the limited capacity of government to get things right.

That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment.

If life's lessons could be reduced to single sentences, ther would be no need for fiction.

My client may deserve serious punishment, but first prove that is the case. And remember at all times that he is a human being, which means he must be treated with minimum standards of decency, because doing so redeems not only him but you.

This is life. You know the philosphers? The Present never stops. There’s only the Present. You cheat life if you live in the Past.

The joke was thinking you were ever really in charge of your life. You pressed your oar down into the water to direct the canoe, but it was the current that shot you through the rapids. You just hung on and hoped not to hit a rock or a whirlpool.

It was something like stirring concrete with my eyelashes.

After a week, it’s better. I miss her. I mourn her. But some peace has returned. She had been so unattainable – so young, so much a citizen of a different era – that it is hard to feel fully deprived.