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.

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.

The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.

What kills a person at twenty-five? Leukemia. An accident. But George knows the better odds are that someone who passes at that age dies of unhappiness. Drug overdose. Suicide. Reckless behavior.

I count myself as one of millions of Americans whose life simply would not be the same without the libraries that supported my learning.

People talk of me as being the inventor of the legal thriller.

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.