John Grisham Quotes

In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.

One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers.

You live your life today, Not tommorow, and certainly not yesterday.

Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.

I always try to tell a good story, one with a compelling plot that will keep the pages turning. That is my first and primary goal. Sometimes I can tackle an issue-homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty-and wrap a good story around it.

Jesus preached more and taught more about helping the poor and the sick and the hungry than he did about heaven and hell. Shouldn't that tell us something?

When witnesses concoct lies, they often miss the obvious.

It's amazing how lies grow. You start with a small one that seems easy to cover, then you get boxed in and tell another one. Then another. People believe you at first, then they act upon your lies, and you catch yourself wishing you'd simply told the truth.

Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.

If you're gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.

When you work at street level you never know who's going to walk through your door.

Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.

My mum was never too keen on TV, so we kids all went to the library and got books out. Right from the start, I loved the works of Mark Twain. Every time I read about Tom Sawyer, I'd go out and do something low-level naughty, just like him.

An outline is crucial. It saves so much time. When you write suspense, you have to know where you're going because you have to drop little hints along the way. With the outline, I always know where the story is going. So before I ever write, I prepare an outline of 40 or 50 pages.

judge not that ye be not judged

I'm alone and outgunned, scared and inexperienced, but I'm right.

Live your life the way you want. You'll figure it out.

I earned my first steady paycheck watering rose bushes at a nursery for a dollar an hour.

Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.

I was a lawyer for 10 years - a short time, but it molded me into who I am. My clients were little people fighting big corporations, so it was a natural thing to not only represent the little guy but also to pull for him - it's the American way.

Critics should find meaningful work.

Keeping a guy in prison costs 50,000 bucks a year. Executing one costs a couple million.

Once again, I was reminded that Tally was the prettiest girl I'd ever met, and when she smiled at me my mind went blank. Once you've seen a pretty girl naked, you feel a certain attachment to her.

Quite often I can be in a bookshop, standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham, yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.

Stephen King reached out to me twenty-five years ago and taught me some valuable lessons. In return, I've tried to be generous with my time over the years with young writers. I've given them my email and said if you need someone to talk to, I've been through it.

I'm not in favor of the death penalty. But I'm in favor of locking these people away in maximum security units where they can never get out. They can never escape. They can never be paroled. Lock the bad ones away. But you gotta rethink everybody else.

Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story.

Reading is by far the most successful pursuit of happiness.

Life is short..Live to the fullest.

I guess under the right circumstances, a man will do just about anything.

Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.

There's always such a rush to judgment. It makes a fair trial hard to get.

I've sold too many books to get good reviews anymore. There's a lot of jealousy, because [reviewers] think they can write a good novel or a best-seller and get frustrated when they can't. I've learned to despise them.

My decision to become a lawyer was irrevocably sealed when I realized my father hated the legal profession.

More than 100 people have been sent to death row who were later exonerated because they weren't guilty or fairly tried. Most criminal defendants do not get adequate representation because there are not enough public defenders to represent them. There is a lot that is wrong.

Privileged people don't march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy.

A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure.

I have learned not to read reviews. Period. And I hate reviewers. All of them, or at least all but two or three. Life is much simpler ignoring reviews and the nasty people who write them. Critics should find meaningful work.

It's as if we spend our entire lives avoiding Jell-O but it is always there at the end, waiting.

The two mistakes that come to mind are people who introduce a flood of characters in the first few pages. Where the reader has to stop and get out a flow chart and has to figure out who is who. And you just can't do that - introduce the first four generations of a character's family in the first chapter. You can introduce four or five characters at the most in the first chapter. Another mistake is to use big words that are not normally used in conversation to try to impress folks with your vocabulary.

Some people have more guts than brains.

The first thing my family did when we moved was join the local church. The second was to go to the library and get library cards.

He's my client, and he's counting on me. I'll take him, warts and all.

I still enjoy the process of writing. If I ever feel like I am going through the motions because I can sell anything at this level, I hope that somebody, somewhere who I trust will tell me to take a break and stop because it's sounding old. But so far, I don't feel like I'm boring anyone.

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

I don't want to force my politics on my readers.

The company later went broke, and of course all blame was directed at the lawyers. Not once did I hear any talk that maybe a trace of mismanagement could in any way have contributed to the bankruptcy.

You need some coffee, don't you?" "Yes, I've only had a gallon.

How could homosexuals possibly srew up the sanctity of marriage any worse than heterosexuals?

I grew up in a very small, close-knit, Southern Baptist family, where everything was off-limits. So I couldn't wait to get to college and have some fun. And I did for the first two years. And I regret a lot of it, because my grades were in terrible shape.