Put the strong, masculine figure in a school with tough kids and you have a certain control. It's very demeaning to the kids and very demeaning to the tough, black guy, but that's how they worked it.

I'm particularly committed to the political people who needed defense. I understand that they're fighting a bigger war than just, "Let me go get some money for cocaine tonight."

My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.

The only way not to be afraid is to join with other people who are also afraid.

Lawyering is very individualistic. There are lawyers who are going to be that persistent birddog, they're never going to give up on the client, they're going to defend people.

I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens.

The only thing we have is each other.

If you make a mistake as a prosecutor, your mistakes go home, whereas if you make a mistake defending, they go to jail.

Your goal is to make a better world through the work you do. It's not always possible, and you have to earn a living.

You're working not for the corporate interest, not for the government interest, not for your own self-interest. You have a higher calling.

I took anything that came across my doorstep. I started getting a reputation.

Life is an essay you yourself have to write, start to finish.

Chaos, leave me never, keep me wildand keep me freeso that mybrokenness will be, the only beautythe world will see.

Love has the power to hold the whole universe together.

Their boots were black and shiny and your treasures gleamed like stars, Bones from deep down in the fertile crescent.

Unless you build castles in the air, how can you make them?

Perfect partners don't exist. Perfect conditions exist for a limited time in which partnerships express themselves best.

The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be.

The ultimate idea of rags-to-riches success in America is the Hollywood movie star.

For those of us who have a ground of knowledge which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to act fearlessly than to argue.

But I had no plans to end my own life, and accidents couldn't be predicted. Neither could murder, unless my aunt and uncle were planning to take me out themselves.