There's more of yourself in a book than a play. that's why we know all about Dickens and not much about Shakespeare. Ben Jonson murdered people; Marlowe was a spy; Shakespeare just sat in the corner and took notes.

Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.

No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

Like childhood, old age is irresponsible, reckless, and foolhardy. Children and old people have everything to gain and nothing much to lose. It's middle-age which is cursed by the desperate need to cling to some finger-hold halfway up the mountain, to conform, not to cause trouble, to behave well.

The freedom to make a fortune on the stock exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech.

I'd been told of all the things you're meant to feel when your father dies. Sudden freedom, growing up, the end of dependence, the step into the sunlight when no one is taller than you and you're in no one's shadow. I know what I felt. Lonely.