Quotes by Attorneys - Page 3

People who don't have much get ugly about giving up the little they have left.
Andrew Vachss
..I began speaking.. First, I took issue with the media's characterization of the post-Katrina New Orleans as resembling the third world as its poor citizens clamored for a way out. I suggested that my experience in New Orleans working with the city's poorest people in the years before the storm had reflected the reality of third-world conditions in New Orleans, and that Katrina had not turned New Orleans into a third-world city but had only revealed it to the world as such. I explained that my work, running Reprieve, a charity that brought lawyers and volunteers to the Deep South from abroad to work on death penalty issues, had made it clear to me that much of the world had perceived this third-world reality, even if it was unnoticed by our own citizens. To try answer Ryan's question, I attempted to use my own experience to explain that for many people in New Orleans, and in poor communities across the country, the government was merely an antagonist, a terrible landlord, a jailer, and a prosecutor. As a lawyer assigned to indigent people under sentence of death and paid with tax dollars, I explained the difficulty of working with clients who stand to be executed and who are provided my services by the state, not because they deserve them, but because the Constitution requires that certain appeals to be filed before these people can be killed. The state is providing my clients with my assistance, maybe the first real assistance they have ever received from the state, so that the state can kill them. I explained my view that the country had grown complacent before Hurricane Katrina, believing that the civil rights struggle had been fought and won, as though having a national holiday for Martin Luther King, or an annual march by politicians over the bridge in Selma, Alabama, or a prosecution - forty years too late - of Edgar Ray Killen for the murder of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, were any more than gestures. Even though President Bush celebrates his birthday, wouldn't Dr. King cry if he could see how little things have changed since his death? If politicians or journalists went to Selma any other day of the year, they would see that it is a crumbling city suffering from all of the woes of the era before civil rights were won as well as new woes that have come about since. And does anyone really think that the Mississippi criminal justice system could possibly be a vessel of social change when it incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than almost any place in the world, other than Louisiana and Texas, and then compels these prisoners, most of whom are black, to work prison farms that their ancestors worked as chattel of other men? ...I hoped, out loud, that the post-Katrina experience could be a similar moment [to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fiasco], in which the American people could act like the children in the story and declare that the emperor has no clothes, and hasn't for a long time. That, in light of Katrina, we could be visionary and bold about what people deserve. We could say straight out that there are people in this country who are racist, that minorities are still not getting a fair shake, and that Republican policies heartlessly disregard the needs of individual citizens and betray the common good. As I stood there, exhausted, in front of the thinning audience of New Yorkers, it seemed possible that New Orleans's destruction and the suffering of its citizens hadn't been in vain.
Billy Sothern
From the very second that two people sat together around a fire in the forest, there was another human out there who felt better in the dark.
Andrew Vachss
Nixon’s offences had been so long in the past, so much part of a different era that he now seemed like some lovable but bigoted uncle you tolerated at Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Jacob M. Appel
Choose old people for enemies. They die. You win.
Jacob M. Appel
The reality and what it meant was slowly dawning: the betrayal, deception, and omission. Clandestine meetings. Evasion under questioning. In hindsight, Dana and Evan picked out the clues they’d missed, reevaluated the moments they’d been led astray, and tiptoed over possible theories as to how they’d been duped.
V.S. Kemanis
She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He'd read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: "Well, darling, we're going to be rich." Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: "We're all going to die.
Jacob Appel
To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving’s to Truman Capote’s, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation’s literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan’s salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge.
Jacob M. Appel
When one has been as near to the reality of Life (which after all is Death) as I have been dearest, one only remembers the beautiful and tender moments and all the rest becomes a half veiled mist of unrealities. Try and remember me beloved as the flower you plucked and not the flower you tread upon . . . . Darling I love you—I love you—and had I loved you just a little less I might have remained with you—only after one has created a very beautiful blossom one does not drag it through the mire. The higher you set your ideal the lower it falls. I have loved you my darling as it is given to few men to be loved. I only beseech you that the tragedy which commenced in love should also end with it. . . .Ruttie Jinnah's last letter to Jinnah
Rafia Zakaria
Some animal rights activists are demanding vegetarianism, even veganism now, or nothing. But since only 4 or 5 percent of Americans claim to be vegetarians, 'nothing' is the far more likely outcome. I ask these activists to weigh the horrors of Bladen County's industrial farms and the Tar Heel slaughterhouse against the consequences of doing nothing to alleviate the hour-to-hour sufferings of its victims. Is not a life lived off the factory farm and a death humanely inflicted superior to the terrible lives we know they lead and the horrible deaths we know they suffer in Bladen County today?
Steven M. Wise
You might think of a thought as an invisible, innocuous little thing. Something that barely exists. But a thought is something hard to conceal. Hold a thought and it melts all over your hands. Touch something else and now you’ve left traces of it. Hide it under your shirt and it bleeds through.
Thomas Lloyd Qualls
If the landscape of human emotion were to exist in country, it would be in Italy." ~Lisa Fantino/Amalfi Blue
Lisa Fantino
Life is random. Life is complicated. Life is often unforgiving. And we must each live it anyway. And I don’t mean live it as if it’s a chore, something to be endured, survived. I mean, dig in, get muddy, howl at the moon, take pictures of sunsets, play in the rain, make love, savor your food, smile as much as you can. And cry when you’re sad. Live it despite the fact it pisses you off. Live it and pay as much attention as you can muster
Thomas Lloyd Qualls
Real estate is the best investment on earth, however, when the music stops playing, which happens occasionally, don't be the one left without a chair.
Steven Ivy Attorney Entrepreneur
A title from the1966 movie"The Russians Are Coming,The Russians Are Coming," gives a new meaning toa phrase: "wait a minute, we've seen this movie before
Steven Ivy Attorney Entrepreneur
The minute you stop caring about your business, is the same minute your business stops caring about you.
Steven Ivy Attorney Entrepreneur
Remember, you will always fail in business if you don't try to open your own business.
Steven Ivy Attorney Entrepreneur
There are Atheists in foxholesAtheists in hurricanesThere are Atheists in all the rolesDenied by your refrainsAtheists are your fellow citizensPeople who love and laugh and cryAtheists are your relatives and friendsDon't insult them with a lieAtheists in many foxholes servedAnd some have had to dieGive Atheists the thanks deservedDon't dismiss them with a lieAtheists are all around youThey work, they help, they careAnd no matter what you think is trueAtheists are everywhereAnd no matter what you think is trueThey do not want your prayer
Edwin Kagin
Never make enemies of anyone younger or healthier than you are. They write your history.
Jacob M. Appel
If your imaginary friends are at all like mine, they’re better off dead.
Susan Spann
If love would die along with death, this life wouldn't be so hard.
Andrew Vachss
It gets harder as times go by, because memory is the first casualty of manic depression. When I'm manic, all I remember is the moment. When I'm depressed, all I remember is the pain. The surrounding details are lost to me.
Terry Cheney
It’s a little-known secret, and it should probably stay that way: attempting suicide usually jump-starts your brain chemistry. There must be something about taking all those pills that either floods the brain sufficiently or depletes it so completely that balance is restored. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that you emerge on the other side of the attempt with an awareness of what it means to be alive. Simple acts seem miraculous: you can stand transfixed for hours just watching the wind ruffle the tiny hairs along the top of your arm. And always, with every sensation, is the knowledge that you must have survived for a reason. You just can’t doubt it anymore. You must have a purpose, or you would have died. You have the rest of your life to discover what that purpose is. And you can’t wait to start looking.
Terri Cheney
The planet you inhabit is a single plane of infinite dimensions, stretched like a guitar string, and standing before you like a concubine waiting for your command.
Thomas Lloyd Qualls
words are a border collie’s worst nightmare.
Thomas Lloyd Qualls
Sometimes broken hearts are needed, that way you will appreciate the one that handles it with care.
Lilly Ghalichi
So for me the creative world isn’t what you do after your day job, though many professional musicians do this to make ends meet, but it’s something that IS a job. Perhaps that’s why I’m not as disheartened by the more cold blooded aspects of the industry. Over the course of watching my mother navigate the creative world I’ve seen just about every trick pulled that could have been and I’ve seen her deposit the checks received for a job well done. When I recently asked her why she chose the creative world she said: “Early on I decided that if I had to work I was going to work at something that I loved.”I’m glad she did. As difficult, chaotic, dysfunctional and crazy as the world in music and the arts can be I always knew that they mattered deeply to her, as they do to me.
Jamie Freveletti
The painter knew that color was not something you controlled but something you set free. He believed that color knew its way home.
Thomas Lloyd Qualls
Budgeting has only one rule: Do not go over budget.
Leslie Tayne
Girls don't go to law school," I told him."No, but women do.
Rikki Klieman
Starshine’s greatest challenge is deciding whether a woman is too young to soothe or too old to shame. Handling the men is much easier. They may feign interest in figures and photos, but their underlying interest is for breasts and thighs. A generous smile often adds an extra zero to a check; an additional inch of exposed cleavage can clothe five Laotian children. The vast majority of these men do not expect to purchase Starshine’s favors. They are husbands, fathers, pillars of the community, the sort of upstanding middle-aged patriarchs who would rather castrate their libidos than compromise their reputations, and even if their three-digit donations could earn them a quickie with the canvasser, they would deny themselves the pleasure.
Jacob M. Appel
Battery Park resonates with lust as the sun approaches its zenith. A primal impulse takes hold of the young couples strolling the gravel walkways, the newlyweds who have paused to admire DeModica’s bronze bull, the truant teens laid out on the cool grass. Maybe because all flesh tantalizes in the early summer, in the right light, or because, at this time of year, there is more flesh exposed, midriffs, cleavage, inner thighs, the park is suddenly transformed into a dynamo of panting and groping. This desire is not the tender affection of evening, the wistful intimacy of the twilight’s last gleam. It is raw, concupiscent hunger.
Jacob M. Appel
Be optimistic. Always put on clean underwear if you're going on a date.
Jacob M. Appel
If you give a man a hammer, he thinks he can solve all problems by pounding. Well, God gave men penises....
Jacob M. Appel
The boss is never your friend, even if you're sleeping with him.
Jacob M. Appel
Maybe life involves the pairing of unsuitable people, those who wait and those who keep others waiting, and the key to happiness is finding the one person with whom you share the same internal chronometer.
Jacob M. Appel
The only thing more difficult than persuading someone else to start having sex with you is persuading yourself to stop.
Jacob M. Appel
I used to dream of true love; now I'm open to false, but convincing....
Jacob M. Appel
Nothing spices up one's sex life like having a partner.
Jacob M. Appel
A couple of buffoons were running for some state-senate seat just vacated by the incumbent's prison term. One accused the other of being "against the Internet" - a knockout punch in a world where whole hordes of humans think better sex is a faster modem.
Andrew Vachss
Marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of your trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, until one of you cracks or stops existing.
Jacob M. Appel
[ ] manic sex isn't really intercourse. It's dicourse, just another way to ease the insatiable need for contact and communication. In place of words, I simply spoke with my skin.
Terri Cheney
If someone's trying to get you angry, the calmer you get, the angrier they'll get.
Valerie Jarrett
Family' is not just a biological word, it's an an operative one.
Andrew Vachss
It's the family you choose that counts.
Andrew Vachss
...love is a chemical imbalance, too. That perilous highs and desperate lows and extravagant flurries of mood are not always symptoms of a broken mind, but signs of a beating heart.
Terri Cheney
Reading as an adult, for pleasure, is infinitely better than reading the stuff assigned to you back in school. You get to choose what you want to read.
Lisa Bloom
Read. Read until your eyes are sore. Then read some more.
Lisa Bloom
Unless today is well lived, tomorrow is not important.
Alan Sakowitz
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.
Elizabeth Edwards
I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.
Jim Garrison
Camouflage doesn't help when the other guy is willing to defoliate the whole jungle.
Andrew Vachss
The use of force is always an answer to problems...[It] isn't an attractive answer, though.
David Drake
A good friend is a balm for the heart.
Linda A. Tancs
Fear is an enemy that can be killed only at close range. The closest range of all is intimacy. The deeper the fear is embedded in one’s spirit, the more vulnerable it is.
Andrew Vachss
If a train is coming at you, closing your eyes won't save you ... but if you look right at it, you at least have a chance to jump.
Andrew Vachss
That's my point: if you own thirty or more books, or you are reading any book at this moment, you may protest all you want, but you were born on the wrong continent.
Thomas Geoghegan
So many FREAKS and not enough CIRCUSES!
Rachel Renée Russell
I remember that story. You have read it four times." Samson shrugged. "Why should I stop with the first reading? Nobody says, 'That was a fine piece of music. I'll never listen to that again." But some people treat books that way. Not I!
Karen A. Wyle
I remember that story. You have read it four times." Samson shrugged. "Why should I stop with the first reading? Nobody says, 'That was a fine piece of music. I'll never listen to that again." But some people treat books that way. Not I!
Karen A. Wyle