Juan Carlos

“It is a given of the criminal justice system, an axiom as certain as the laws of gravity, that defendants rarely tell the truth. Cops and prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges- everybody knows they lie. They lie solemnly; with sweaty palms and shifty eyes; or, more often, with a look of schoolboy innocence and an increased disbelief when their credulty is assailed. They lie to protect themselves; they lie to protect their friends. They lie for the fun of it, or because that is the way they have always been. They lie about big details and small ones, about who started it, who thought of it, who did it and who was sorry. But they lie. It is the defendant's credo. Lie to the cops. Lie to your lawyer. Lie to the jury that tries your case. If convicted, lie to your probation officer. Lie to your bunkmate in the pen. Trumpet your innocence. Let the dirty bastards out there with a grain of doubt. Something can always change.”
― Scott Turow, Presumed Innocent

“There are some things he doesn't want to know about himself, and others he doesn't want anybody else to know. Which makes him like the rest of us. ...
There are moments in the lives of others that excite both our disgust and our shame, the fear of what we ourselves might do. ...
I venture to say that everyone on this jury, and everyone in this room, has done things that they're ashamed of, and told lies that they regret.”
― Richard North Patterson, Silent Witness

“TV and the movies have spoiled the most intimate moments of our lives. They have given us conventions which dominante our expectations in instants whose intensity would ordinarily make them spontaneous and unique. We have conventions of grief,which we learned from the Kennedys, and ordained gestures for victory by which we imitate the atheletes we see on the tube, who in turn have learned the same things from other jocks they saw on TV. Seduction, too, has got its standards now, its slow-eyed moments, its breathless repartee, and in an instance such as this we end up coming on smooth and wry and bravely composed, like all those gorgeous, poised movietime couples probably because we have no other idea of how to behave.”
― Scott Turow, Presumed Innocent

“How I live matters more than what I do. I have ambitions for the quality of how I live. I have no ambition for making money ...and I'd have time to read enough to be a constant source of information, ideas and language.”
― John Irving, The 158-Pound Marriage