Zitat des Tages von Scott Turow:
I really believe that the movie will never be as good as the book, both because the book goes on longer - a movie is basically an abridgment of a book - and because books are internal. But they are incredibly powerful. The visual format is, you know, amazing.
Postmodernism cost literature its audience.
On the streets, unrequited love and death go together almost as often as in Shakespeare.
I think lawyers have a fidelity to the system itself that's always got to be with them, and indeed, most of the defense lawyers I know observe that.
In re-reading 'Presumed Innocent,' the one thing that struck me - and I re-read the book four different times in writing 'Innocent,' interested in different things each time - but I did think there were a couple of extra loops in the plot that I probably didn't need. The other thing that sort of amazed me was how discursive the book was.
I spent four of my five years at Stanford writing a novel I was unable to sell.
I don't like re-writing very much. The fourth and the fifth draft - that's too much like work. There's not much inspiration about it, and the lawyerly side kicks in - being very careful and somewhat technical.
You know, my mom, who inspired me to be a novelist, I remember her reading 'The Agony and the Ecstasy,' about Michelangelo, and saying, 'No mother would want that for her child, no matter how great the artist.' I have my share of demons, but I am a gregarious sort.
I am a big believer in the fact that all authors really write only one book.
I don't know if a novelist ever fully detaches him- or herself from what they wrote and the way they wrote it. I can watch 'Presumed Innocent' again and again, and I will always be bothered by the same things that will never bother anybody else.
For thousands and thousands of American kids, libraries are the only safe place they can find to study, a haven free from the dangers of street or the numbing temptations of television. As schools cut back services, the library looms even more important to countless children.
Widespread public access to knowledge, like public education, is one of the pillars of our democracy, a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry.
The great break of my literary career was going to law school.
Like most Americans of my age, I was very impressed by the dynamic capacities of the law, demonstrated by the Civil Rights Movement and then Watergate, animated by Sam Ervin's mantra that no person is above the law.
The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.
People talk of me as being the inventor of the legal thriller.
If life's lessons could be reduced to single sentences, there would be no need for fiction.
There are a whole lot of little tales told in 'Presumed Innocent,' whether it's about the Hobberly kid, who was an important witness who ends up assassinated, or an accountant named Marcy Lupino, who meets a horrible fate in a state penitentiary. There's less of that in 'Innocent,' and deliberately so.
All my novels are about the ambiguities that lie beneath the sharp edges of the law.
The hardest part is not to repeat yourself. I don't really believe my core obsessions are going to change, but you need to look for ways to express them that are different. The main reason for doing that is not to bore yourself, and obviously, I don't want to bore readers.
The first time I remember really being excited about a book was 'The Count of Monte Cristo.'
I keep two sentimental mementos on my desk to remind me of two favorite men. There is an inkwell that my Uncle Seymour made, a brass grotesque he mounted on a marble base. And my grandfather's shaving cup is there, used to store pencils and pens.
Being a lawyer, even in a city as large as Chicago, is like being a citizen of a small town. I love watching the life of the town play out. You know, the rise and fall of individual lives in the entire community is just fascinating to me.
I'm an ambitious person, and Harvard makes me feel successful, just having gotten in here. That's the ugly side of why I'm proud of being at Harvard Law School. Another reason is because there's a spirit of serious intellectual endeavor here.
The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author.
Generally, I like to write in the morning before all the dust of dreams has blown away. Beforehand, I read two papers, cook my breakfast and then settle down in front of the word processor, usually by 8 A.M. I'll write, and then check e-mail or voicemail when things stall.
I tend to write in the mornings.
I write based on powerful inner impulses, and those seem to shift over time.
The one thing I would like more credit for is being part of a movement which involves recognising the importance of plot and asserting that books of literary worth could be written that had plots.
I've never been under the illusion that everybody on death row is innocent - far from it. My own guess is upwards of 90 percent are guilty. But a ten percent error rate if that's what it is, or even five percent, is really way too high.
Certainly, when I was a boy, people liked to believe that lawyers were kind of pillars of goodness of the likes of Atticus Finch in 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'
Amazon can't be all good or all bad. I don't think that everything they do is evil; they've given a lot of authors access.
Los Angeles for many years had operated with a police department that was far smaller than other police departments had in areas of comparable or larger size, New York and Chicago being the most obvious examples.
I grew up on the north side of Chicago, in West Rogers Park, an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. When I was 13, my parents moved to Winnetka, Illinois, an upper class, WASPy suburb where Jews - as well as Blacks and Catholics - were unwelcome on many blocks. I suffered the spiritual equivalent of whiplash.
I love criminal law. It must be the Dostoyevskian streak in me. I'm fascinated by the accumulation of forces that make people behave in ways that everybody else hates.
I read little nonfiction, but I have no boundaries about the fiction I relish. The only unfailing criterion is that I can hitch my heart to the imagined world and read on.
