"As the crow flies" - a popular and picturesque expression to denote a straight line.

Everybody is presumed to know the law except His Majesty's judges, who have a Court of Appeal set over them to put them right.

Nominal damages are in effect, only a peg to hang costs on.

After a hard frost a man might wake in the morning and find he was breaking a covenant.

An enactment for the favour and liberty of the subject ought to have a liberal construction.

Fictions of law must be consistent with justice.

Sheep don’t need the shepherd to be what they are. The shepherd needs sheep to be what he is.

We can all have plenty of lives, but there are limits. You never can tell what they are.

No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.

I almost trust her to burn the bridges while standing at the cliff herself. She hardly agrees to be on the same page as others, either ahead of all or all in a different book.

I was excited about working with Richard Gere. Oh, and Joan Allen! Oh, my God, she is such a force of nature, it's mind boggling.

Don't sulk. For someone with all the grace and coordination of a pregnant wildebeest, you did great.

Men, permitted to put words (and other things) in women's mouths, create scenes in which women desperately want to be bound, battered, tortured, humiliated, and killed.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

I think I've done pretty well. I've had about 46, or 47 nominations from my movies, and my films have won about 12 awards, so I don't have any complaints.

After I became a citizen, I felt freer to say what I thought about this country, both negative and positive. I think I had been, consciously and subconsciously, biting my tongue in the past.