I can't say that I ever actually decided to become a writer. It kind of snuck up on me. — William Landay Decided Copy Share Image
“Predisposition is not predestination. We humans are much, much more than our DNA.” — William Landay Destiny 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 Faster 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 Appreciated 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
“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
“All they got locked up in this hole is my body. That's all they got, my body, not me. I'm everywhere, see?… — William Landay Got Body 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 Ache 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
“...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
“The iPod was a leak. It was a danger. I brought it down to the basement and laid it on my little… — William Landay Leak 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 Careful 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
“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 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
“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
“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
“But it is not enough to be told a word as big as that. You have to live with it, carry it… — William Landay Different times 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
“Out popped Paul Duffy, in plain clothes except for a state police windbreaker and a badge clipped to his belt. He looked… — William Landay Babe ruth 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 Childish 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 Know 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 Childish 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Confirmation bias is the tendency to see things in your environment that confirm your preconceived ideas and not see things that conflict… — William Landay Copy Share Image
“I rather doubt he had the sense to see the truth: that there are wounds worse than fatal, which the law's little… — William Landay Truth 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
“She did not want to go but understood that I was uneasy, that I felt spotlighted here, that I was not much… — William Landay Uneasy Copy Share Image
“The truth is, the best win-lost records are not built on great trial work. They are built on cherry-picking only the strongest… — William Landay Right and wrong Copy Share Image
“But then, we all tell ourselves stories about ourselves. The money man tells himself that by getting rich he is actually enriching… — William Landay Art Copy Share Image
At some point as adults we cease to be our parents' children and we become our children's parents instead. — William Landay Adults Copy Share Image