I don't ever write with a particular audience in mind. I just write books that please me. — William Landay Audience Copy Share Image
We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward. — William Landay Clock Copy Share Image
“no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed—but” — William Landay Copy Share Image
I can't say that I ever actually decided to become a writer. It kind of snuck up on me. — William Landay Copy Share Image
There is no absolute beginning to any story, after all. There is only the moment you begin watching. — William Landay Beginning Copy Share Image
Well, I outline fanatically. I am a long thinker and a slow writer, though I am trying to get faster. — William Landay Copy Share Image
“Predisposition is not predestination. We humans are much, much more than our DNA.” — William Landay Destiny Copy Share Image
“NPD is not a chemical imbalance. And it is not genetic. It is a complex of behaviors, a deeply ingrained habit.” — William Landay Habits Copy Share Image
“…I never expected to lose in court. In practice, I did lose, of course. Every lawyer loses, just as every baseball player… — William Landay Copy Share Image
An emotion is a thought, yes, an idea, but it is also a sensation, an ache in your body. Desire, love, hate,… — William Landay Copy Share Image
“Parents of murdered children have it worst, and to me the fathers have it even worse than the mothers because they are… — William Landay Children Copy Share Image
“I used to wonder what it would be like if a magical amnesia descended and erased my mind completely, leaving only a… — William Landay Amnesia Copy Share Image
“The iPod was a leak. It was a danger. I brought it down to the basement and laid it on my little… — William Landay Copy Share Image
“...don't worry about how things look. People are going to think whatever they think. To hell with 'em. You can't worry about… — William Landay Fear Copy Share Image
Probably careful plotting reflects my personality. I am meticulous by nature. I can't imagine speed-writing anything that happens to pop into my… — William Landay Copy Share Image
“Free will is as important to the law as it is to religion or any other code of morality. We do not… — William Landay Morality Copy Share Image
“Next to me was Jacob, this riddle Laurie and I had made. His size, his resemblance to me, the likelihood that he… — William Landay Father Copy Share Image
“In court, the thing we punish is the criminal intention. -the mens rea, the guilty mind. There is an ancient rule: actus… — William Landay Crime Copy Share Image
“I could not help seeing in Laurie the ghost of her younger self, the teenaged girl with a lovely, full, heart-shaped face.… — William Landay Double vision Copy Share Image
“At seventeen, I knew: my entire childhood had been just a prelude to this girl. I had never felt anything like it,… — William Landay Childhood Copy Share Image
“I have an idea that is is what enduring love really means, Your memories of a girl at seventeen become as real… — William Landay Double vision Copy Share Image
“But it is not enough to be told a word as big as that. You have to live with it, carry it… — William Landay Copy Share Image
“Let us be practical in our expectations of the Criminal Law.… [For] we have merely to imagine, by some trick of time… — William Landay Ancestor Copy Share Image
“The towering lie of the criminal justice system—that we can reliably determine the truth, that we can know “beyond a reasonable doubt”… — William Landay Criminal justice Copy Share Image
Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds you—and it will find you — William Landay Damage Copy Share Image
You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time. — William Landay Copy Share Image
“So I got on with the business of lawyering away at the evidence. Minimizing it. Defending Jacob.” — William Landay Business Copy Share Image
“but good friendships require complementary personalities, not identical ones.” — William Landay Friend Copy Share Image
“both remembered how it all started, and even now, in the middle of my middle age, when I think of that shining… — William Landay First love Copy Share Image
“I had a childish attraction to men of my father's generation, as if I still harbored a faint hope of being unorphaned,… — William Landay Copy Share Image
Genes are not simple triggers. No one is hardwired to commit murder or any other crime. Our actions are always the result… — William Landay Action Copy Share Image
“You can’t do it alone, that’s the thing. You have to remember there are other people out there who have gone through… — William Landay Copy Share Image
“It is a childish realization, I admit—no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed—but… — William Landay Copy Share Image
“Studies have shown that fathers of murdered children often die within a few years of the murder, often of heart failure. Really,… — William Landay Children Copy Share Image
“It is a common architectural strategy to build courtrooms without windows, to enhance the effect of a chamber isolated from the everyday… — William Landay Architecture Copy Share Image
“You're staring.' 'You're my wife. I'm allowed to stare.' 'Is that the rule?' 'Yes. Stare, leer, ogle, anything I want. Trust me.… — William Landay Marriage Copy Share Image
“It was a limitation of human consciousness: We live only in the future and past, we cannot perceive now. Now occupies no… — William Landay Feelings Copy Share Image
“Why risk the rare happy marriage-rarer still, a love marriage that endures-for something as common and toxic as complete, unthinking, transparent honesty?… — William Landay Happy marriage Copy Share Image
“Even the wettest violence, in the end, is cooked down to the stuff of court cases; a ream of paper, a few… — William Landay Court cases Copy Share Image
“This is the best thing about men's friendships: most any awkwardness can be ignored by mutual agreement and, true connection being unimaginable,… — William Landay Awkwardness Copy Share Image
![“Let us be practical in our expectations of the Criminal Law.… [For] we have merely to imagine, by some trick of time travel, meeting our earliest hominid ancestor, Adam, a proto-man, short of stature, luxuriantly furred, newly bipedal, foraging about on the African savannah three million or so…” quote by William Landay](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/def/william-landay-7878_ancestor_let-us-be-practical-in-our-expectations_2937849.png)
