I hate second-guessing other lawyers because I know that I’ve tried and lost cases, and somebody could sit there and say, ‘Should have done it this way,’ and they’d have been right. – Scott Turow
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. – Scott Turow
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. – Scott Turow
There are lots of things about Amazon for which they deserve credit. They’re innovative. There are lots of very, very happy Amazon customers. I’m not here to dispute that Amazon has been personally good for me or to say that they haven’t been, so far, good to their customers. – Scott Turow
The truth of the matter is that the people who succeed in the arts most often are the people who get up again after getting knocked down. Persistence is critical. – Scott Turow
Libraries function as crucial technology hubs, not merely for free Web access, but those who need computer training and assistance. Library business centers help support entrepreneurship and retraining. – Scott Turow
I was one of those kids who never wanted to be anything but a novelist. And I don’t know a lot of people who truly live the life that they dreamed of. – Scott Turow
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. – Scott Turow
‘Presumed Innocent’ was written over a six to seven year period with intervals in between where I was figuring out the end of the book and writing other stuff… My life as a writer was carried on against the odds. I had written four unpublished novels by then… as a writer of fiction, I hadn’t gotten very far. I just wanted to do it. – Scott Turow
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. – Scott Turow
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. – Scott Turow
I trained as a writer before I became a lawyer. I was headed for a life as an English professor, but that just wasn’t me. I’m not a scholar; I didn’t have a scholar’s attitude toward literature. – Scott Turow
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. – Scott Turow
I always say, and I mean it, that the great break of my literary career was when I went to law school. – Scott Turow
The first time I remember really being excited about a book was ‘The Count of Monte Cristo.’ – Scott Turow
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. – Scott Turow
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. – Scott Turow
The American preoccupation with the law, which is certainly not past, was at its zenith in 1995. The 1980s, the late 1980s, had sort of begun to percolate up to public consciousness this enormous interest in the law. – Scott Turow
Musicians make up for the copies of their songs that get pirated by performing live. I don’t think there will be as many people showing up to hear me read as to hear Beyonce sing. We need to make sure piracy is dealt with effectively. – Scott Turow
Americans have grown a great deal more realistic about lawyers and the law. I think that’s all for the good. A lot of people will say to you these days, ‘If you are looking for justice, don’t go to a courtroom.’ That’s just a more realistic perspective on what happens in the legal process. – Scott Turow
Now, many public libraries want to lend e-books, not simply to patrons who come in to download, but to anybody with a reading device, a library card and an Internet connection. In this new reality, the only incentive to buy, rather than borrow, an e-book is the fact that the lent copy vanishes after a couple of weeks. – Scott Turow