I trained as a writer before I became a lawyer. I was headed for a life as an English professor, but that just wasn't me. I'm not a scholar; I didn't have a scholar's attitude toward literature.

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

Americans have grown a great deal more realistic about lawyers and the law. I think that's all for the good. A lot of people will say to you these days, 'If you are looking for justice, don't go to a courtroom.' That's just a more realistic perspective on what happens in the legal process.

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

If life's lessons could be reduced to single sentences, there would be no need for fiction.

I grew up on the north side of Chicago, in West Rogers Park, an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. When I was 13, my parents moved to Winnetka, Illinois, an upper class, WASPy suburb where Jews - as well as Blacks and Catholics - were unwelcome on many blocks. I suffered the spiritual equivalent of whiplash.

The impact of the creative industries, of design and architecture in particular, are of course economic and they are a great export opportunity.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Great artists suffer for the people.

A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.

All great art is born of the metropolis.

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.