John Grisham Quotations

Sometimes I can tackle an issue -homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty - and wrap a good story around it. These are the best books, the ones with a story and a message.

Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.

Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.

I was a lawyer for 10 years - a short time, but it molded me into who I am. My clients were little people fighting big corporations, so it was a natural thing to not only represent the little guy but also to pull for him - it's the American way.

Quite often I can be in a bookshop, standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham, yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.

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.

Right from the start, I loved the works of Mark Twain. Every time I read about Tom Sawyer, I'd go out and do something low-level naughty, just like him.

I have learned not to read reviews. Period. And I hate reviewers. All of them, or at least all but two or three. Life is much simpler ignoring reviews and the nasty people who write them. Critics should find meaningful work.

My mum was never too keen on TV, so we kids all went to the library and got books out. Right from the start, I loved the works of Mark Twain. Every time I read about Tom Sawyer, I'd go out and do something low-level naughty, just like him.

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.

There's always such a rush to judgment. It makes a fair trial hard to get.

Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

We are extremely private, and we really got sort of ambushed by the notoriety.

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.

More than 100 people have been sent to death row who were later exonerated because they weren't guilty or fairly tried. Most criminal defendants do not get adequate representation because there are not enough public defenders to represent them. There is a lot that is wrong.

I always do book signings with the same blue pen. That way, if I add a personalised message to a book I've already signed, it'll be in the same colour as my signature.

Wrongful convictions happen every week in every state in this country. And they happen for all the same reasons. Sloppy police work. Eyewitness identification is the most - is the worst type almost. Because it's wrong about half the time. Think about that.

And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York, is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted, and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

We have the crime of the century every six months. So for people like me who enjoy, you know, taking these stories and writing about them, the material is endless.

The Deep South has the friendliest people in the world. They will do anything for you. They also want to know what's going on and won't hesitate to ask questions.

After I'd been a lawyer for about five or six years, I started playing around with fiction.

I earned my first steady paycheck watering rose bushes at a nursery for a dollar an hour.

I'm not itching to sue Amazon or Wal-Mart... they sell a lot of books. But the future is very uncertain with books.

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.

We want to raise all we can and then take the next two years to spend all of it, ... Hopefully then we'll be out of business and there'll be no more hurricanes.

We didn't want to leave. You feel guilty because you can hop on a plane and come back home where everything works and everything is standing,

We've sent 130 men to death row to be executed in this country, at least 130 that we know of, who have later have been exonerated because they were either innocent, or they were not fairly tried. That's 130 people that we've locked down on death row. And they've spent years there.

One of the reasons we wanted to target Mississippi is, obviously, we are from there,

I'd love to be able to look back and say, 'I've helped this list of people get a new house or rebuild,' ... To say we did something good here.

Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are so ingrained in our society we rarely stop to think about it. I'm able to write what I want--dark fiendish plots without fear. . . . I can criticize the FBI, the CIA, the president and Congress without giving it a thought.

Keeping a guy in prison costs 50,000 bucks a year. Executing one costs a couple million.

I was never a bookworm. I remember reading Dr. Seuss, the Hardy Boys, Emil and the Detectives, Chip Hilton, and lots of Mark Twain and Dickens. My athletic ability did nothing but invite taunts. I was an indifferent student and an athlete with delusions of adequacy, dreams of adulation.

Most criminal defendants do not get adequate representation because there are not enough public defenders to represent them. There is a lot that is wrong.

We're not going to draw any boundaries, ... But the focus is the Gulf Coast region, from here south.

We don't normally publicize gifts. It's something we keep extremely private. But in these very, very rare circumstances -- this tragic time -- we hope the gift will get some attention and inspire other people to contribute money and help our fellow Mississippians on the Gulf Coast,

We don't normally publicize gifts. It's something we keep extremely private.

When you make charitable contributions, you realize you can't save the world, so you find a small area you can go into and hopefully do some good and do it with your own money and your own sweat and you see the results.

We are very fortunate people. We never publicize gifts. We try to avoid publicity, but we decided this may be the time to do so and inspire other people.

Every morning I wake at 6am or 6.30am, champing at the bit.

The month of September, we got involved in a big way,

It may seem odd that I'm here today - the unapologetic writer of popular fiction - on Faulkner's front porch about to announce the finalists for the National Book Award, which are our most prestigious literary awards.

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.

I've had nine of my books adapted to film, and almost all were enjoyable. I've been very lucky with Hollywood, and look forward to more movies being adapted. But I don't get involved in that process. I know nothing about making movies and I stay away from it and hope for the best.

I learned that lesson a long time ago. When you write popular fiction you're going to get bashed by critics.

In these very, very rare circumstances - this tragic time - we hope the gift will get some attention and inspire other people to contribute money and help our fellow Mississippians on the Gulf coast.

In these very, very rare circumstances -- this tragic time -- we hope the gift will get some attention and inspire other people to contribute money and help our fellow Mississippians on the Gulf Coast,

I don't know how much we'll end up raising. Hopefully, we'll have $10 million. ... All the money we raise will go into somebody's home as opposed to going into overhead and stuff like that.

Ten years from now I plan to be sitting here, looking out over my land. I hope I'll be writing books, but if not, I'll be on my pond fishing with my kids. I feel like the luckiest guy I know.

I don't want to force my politics on my readers.

I don't usually eat breakfast. I prefer to be asleep during the hours that it is served.

The worst letters come from retired high school English teachers. They will literally take a book and pick it to pieces and send me 14 pages of notes.

It's a game. We tax lawyers teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich-and the IRS keeps changing the rules so we can keep getting rich teaching them.

I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.

I don't start a novel until I have lived with the story for awhile to the point of actually writing an outline and after a number of books I've learned that the more time I spend on the outline the easier the book is to write. And if I cheat on the outline I get in trouble with the book.

You need some coffee, don't you?" "Yes, I've only had a gallon.

Poverty is a great equalizer

And they drank heavily, partied with great enthusiasm, and relished the drug culture; they moved in and out and slept around, and this was okay because they defined their own morality. They were fighting for the Mexicans and the redwoods, dammit! They had to be good people!

All students enter law school with a certain amount of idealism and desire to serve the public, but after three years of brutal competition we care for nothing but the right job with the right firm where we can make partner in seven years and earn big bucks.

We cuss them because we're not good enough for them. We hate them because they wouldn't look at us, couldn't be bothered to give us an interview. I guess there's a Trent & Brent in every city, in every field. I didn't make it and I don't belong, so I'll just go through life hating them.

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

There are few things in life worse than a long-winded lawyer.

In one long glorious acknowledgment of failure, he laid himself bare before God.

Ricky had taught me a few cuss words. I usually practiced them in the woods by the river, then prayed for forgiveness as soon as I was done.

I was on the verge of tears, so I turned and ran past the trailer and along the field road until I was safely out of their sight. Then I ducked into the cotton and waited for friendly voices. I sat on the hot ground, surrounded by stalks four feet tall, and I cried, something I really hated to do.

I was tired of secrets, tired of seeing things I was not supposed to see. And so I just cried.

The first thing my family did when we moved was join the local church. The second was to go to the library and get library cards.

I've written 17 novels, and I've found out that fiction can't keep up with real life.

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

The good thing about writing fiction is that you can get back at people.

Michael Harvey should be read by all.

In little pockets of conversation, old men were telling stories of ancient floods. Women were talking of about how much rain there'd been in other towns -- Paragould, Lepanto, and Manila.

My name became a brand, and I'd love to say that was the plan from the start. But the only plan was to keep writing books. And I've stuck to that ever since.

I cannot write as well as some people; my talent is in coming up with good stories about lawyers.That is what I am good at.

Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story.

I'm being followed so much I'm causing traffic jams.

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.

I was a lawyer for 10 years - a short time, but it molded me into who I am.

Because I was single, there was a chance I was a homosexual. Because I went to Syracuse, wherever that was, then I was probably a Communist. Or worse, a Liberal. Because I was from Memphis, I was a subversive intent on embarrassing Ford County.

Every morning I wake at 6am or 6.30am, champing at the bit.

I struggle with racism every day

Reading is by far the most successful pursuit of happiness.

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.

I grew up in a very small, close-knit, Southern Baptist family, where everything was off-limits. So I couldn't wait to get to college and have some fun. And I did for the first two years. And I regret a lot of it, because my grades were in terrible shape.

Mr. Buckley, let me explain it this way. And I'll do so very carefully & slowly so that even you will understand it. If I was the sheriff, I would not have arrested him. If I was on the grand jury, I would not have indicted him. If I was the judge, I would not try him. If I was the D.A., I would not prosecute him. If I was on the trial jury, I would vote to give him a key to the city, a plaque to hang on his wall, & I would send him home to his family. And, Mr. Buckley, if my daughter is ever raped, I hope I have the guts to do what he did.

It's as if we spend our entire lives avoiding Jell-O but it is always there at the end, waiting.

How could homosexuals possibly srew up the sanctity of marriage any worse than heterosexuals?

The mother of a trophy wife is not automatically a trophy mother-in-law.

Please give me fifty more years of work and fun, then an instant death when I'm sleeping.

Keeping a guy in prison costs 50,000 bucks a year. Executing one costs a couple million.

She was pondering the option of law school, the great American baby-sitter for directionless postgrads.

Four rehabs meant a fifth was somewhere down the road.

I am currently reading, "The Broker" by John Grisham. it is alittle slow to start so I will have to let you know if it gets better

The company later went broke, and of course all blame was directed at the lawyers. Not once did I hear any talk that maybe a trace of mismanagement could in any way have contributed to the bankruptcy.

I didn't dare think of the future; the past was still happening.

judge not that ye be not judged

Prisons are hate factories, Pastor, and society wants more and more of them.

You burn a man's pickup, and he's ready for war.

Privileged people don't march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy.

I guess under the right circumstances, a man will do just about anything.