Alexander

“Nobody of sound mind can dispute that there is something fundamentally wrong, and intrinsically corrupt, about a legal system that encourages police officers and prosecutors to do everything in their power to persuade you and your children (no matter how young or old) to “do the right thing” and talk—when they tell their own children the exact opposite.”
― James Duane, You Have the Right to Remain Innocent

“The prosecutor’s by obligation is a special mind,” he had written, “mongoose quick, bullying, devious, unrelenting, forever baited to ensnare. It is almost duty bound to mislead, and by instinct dotes on confusing and flourishes on weakness. Its search is for blemishes it can present as scars, its obligation to raise doubts or sour with suspicion. It asks questions not to learn but to convict, and can read guilt into the most innocent of answers. Its hope, its aim, its triumph is to addle a witness into confession by tricking, exhausting, or irritating him into a verbal indiscretion which sounds like a damaging admission. To natural lapses of memory it gives the appearance either of stratagems for hiding misdeeds or, worse still, of lies, dark and deliberate. Feigned and wheedling politeness, sarcasm that scalds, intimidation, surprise, and besmirchment by innuendo, association, or suggestion, at the same time that any intention to besmirch is denied—all these as methods and devices are such staples in the prosecutor’s repertory that his mind turns to them by rote.”
― Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Murder

“Enoch had the same way with his memories as a ship’s master with his rigging—a compulsion to tighten what was slack, mend what was frayed, caulk what leaked, and stow, or throw overboard, what was to no purpose.”
― Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

“In the usual proto-Art-Nouveau style, the sculptor follows through on an ethnographic hunch that surprising numbers of the tribal womenfolk would be in their late teens and free of clothing.”
― Simon Winder, Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe