That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment.

As a defense lawyer, he refused to condemn his clients. Everyone else in the system-the cops, the prosecutors, the juries and judges-would take care of that; they didn't need his help.

The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author.

On the streets, unrequited love and death go together almost as often as in Shakespeare.

I cannot think of a day in my life when the library didn’t exert a potent attraction for me, offering a sense of the specialness of each individual’s curiosity and his or her quest to satisfy it.

I tend to write in the mornings.

Basbanes makes you love books.