'Torts' more or less means 'wrongs'...One of my friends said that Torts is the course which proves that your mother was right.

People are offering competing visions of what happened in the past. And the justice system is willing to accept either of those competing visions and to impose consequences as a result. When you think of it that way, it's a little bit startling, because we want to believe that there is one truth and, therefore, one justice, whereas, if you have practiced law as long as I have, you realize that there is actually a range of acceptable outcomes.

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.

I adore the company of other writers because they are so often lively minds and, frequently, blazingly funny. And of course, we get each other in a unique way.

At the end of the day, perhaps the best argument against capital punishment may be that it is an issue beyond the limited capacity of government to get things right.

For thousands and thousands of American kids, libraries are the only safe place they can find to study, a haven free from the dangers of street or the numbing temptations of television. As schools cut back services, the library looms even more important to countless children.

Poison Pill is a great reading. The novel ranges from Russian oligarchs to the American worlds of drug research and the equity markets, all of it in a mode of high suspense.