William Landay

“I can't say that I ever actually decided to become a writer. It kind of snuck up on me.”

“I'm a bit of a tech geek myself.”

“I love sports, as all Bostonians seem to. I love books and movies, as all writers seem to.”

“I did not speak. I have found in any Q&A, in court, in witness interviews, wherever, often the best thing you can do is wait, say nothing. The witness will want to fill the awkward silence. He will feel a vague compassion to keep talking, to prove he is not holding back, to prove he is smart and in the know, to earn your trust.”

“We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.”

“Probably careful plotting reflects my personality. I am meticulous by nature. I can't imagine speed-writing anything that happens to pop into my head.”

“You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.”

“I don't ever write with a particular audience in mind. I just write books that please me.”

“Crime and legal stories, broadly speaking, are just where my interest happens to lie.”

“Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.”

“But sometimes you can't figure everything out because you can't ever really understand other people. You can't understand why they do what they do. You just have to accept a little mystery, Ben. People are mysterious, the world is mysterious. You can't know everything. You're not supposed to. This isn't a history book. It's just the world. It's a messy place.”

“I am interested in computers and technology, and art, photography, and design.”

“Well, I outline fanatically. I am a long thinker and a slow writer, though I am trying to get faster.”

“Genes are not simple triggers. No one is hardwired to commit murder or any other crime. Our actions are always the result of stupendously complex gene-environment interactions, and environment is likely to remain the more important influence by far.”

“When I was 30 or so - by that time I had become an assistant D.A. - I decided I would try to write a novel. To be clear: I did not decide to become a novelist. Honestly, it never crossed my mind that I could actually earn a living as a professional novelist.”

“So I got on with the business of lawyering away at the evidence. Minimizing it. Defending Jacob.”