John Grisham Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There are three types of words: words we all know, words we should know, and words nobody knows. Don't use the third category.
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I'm not itching to sue Amazon or Wal-Mart... they sell a lot of books. But the future is very uncertain with books.
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Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.
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I don't want to force my politics on my readers.
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I spend a lot of time outlining before I write the first word.
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Your brain is cooked when you write hard for three or four hours.
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After I'd been a lawyer for about five or six years, I started playing around with fiction.
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We are extremely private, and we really got sort of ambushed by the notoriety.
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I hate prologues because they're kind of gimmicks to suck you in.
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I earned my first steady paycheck watering rose bushes at a nursery for a dollar an hour.
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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.
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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.
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Keeping a guy in prison costs 50,000 bucks a year. Executing one costs a couple million.
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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.