"There's a sect for every nut."
Jack: "An angry kid full of rage, just looking for a target."
Serena: "Isn't that what a terrorist is?"
Jack: "What's scary is how easy it is to create one."
Sheets: "She's 16, Jack. When you were 16, you were sneaking into ball games and swiping cigarettes from the local bodega."
Jack: "Neither of which is a class A felony."
Serena: "In the pantheon of evil, what Gary Bergen did with Fiona Reid doesn't even make the top ten."
Jack: "I hope you never have a daughter, Serena."
"Never get Freudian with a man with a pickle!"
Serena: "I thought no jury would convict Little Orphan Annie."
Jack: "That's right. Lizzie Borden's another story."
"Why is it that she always adopts the person of a teenager? After all, she is 26 years old. Wouldn't it be more fun to be an astronaut or a race car driver?"
"How does the story go? When you leave Shangri-La, you immediately turn old and gray."
Serena: "Being 16 forever -- that wouldn't be so bad."
Jack: "That must have been one hell of a prom night."
"I've heard a few good arguments to legalize drugs, but mass suicide wasn't one of them."
Serena: "We need to deal with Patty Voytek, sir."
Jack: "She's a sort of rock star."
"I hear an open the floodgates argument coming."
Serena: "It's also one that could set an unconscionable precedent."
Jack: "That's a concern for judges, not prosecutors."
Serena: "Really? What is our concern then?"
Jack: "Putting a particular killer behind bars."
Lennie: "Your old man was on the job, wasn't he?"
Jack: "Twenty two years."
Lennie: "Yeah, he'd be real proud of you today."
Jack: "That's not what gets me up in the morning."
Lennie: "In case you're interested, blackmail's against the law."
Jack: "Arrest me."
Serena: "There's something to be said for the power of the press."
Jack: "More to be said about the power of the old squeeze play."
"This story may be more biblical than we think."
Arthur: "You win the kewpie doll. Tossed one pitch, knocked over two bottles."
Serena: "Don't you mean tossed one illegal pitch?"
Arthur: "Bob Gibson made the Hall of Fame throwing a spitball. 'Rules or no rules', he said, 'pitchers are gonna throw spitters. It's a matter of survival.'"
Jack: "Why doesn't that comfort me?"
Arthur: "You don't like being sandbagged. I don't like the race card thrown in my face."
Jack: "Hey!"
"The man is a district attorney, not Attila the Hun."
Serena: "Every Christmas, my father used to drag us to St. Bartholomew's for midnight mass. The thing that I remember most was the walk home. after the service. Rain or snow, it didn't matter. We still walked, and all the way home the only thing I could think about was, what's wrong with me? Why aren't I like all of those people who actually believe the words that they're singing?"
Jack: "Maybe it was the eggnog your Uncle Harry slipped you."
"You should write fiction, Mr. Maynard."
"Mistakes. I try not to make them."
"Where I come from, one plus one does not equal three."
Defense attorney: "We're just following our clients' directions."
Jack: "And what law schools did they go to?"
Serena: "Are you saying that all of this was part of Trial Tricks 102?"
Arthur: "That or a big, juicy mea culpa."
Jack: "All three of them should put Serena on their Christmas card lists."
Serena: "I just wish that there was a way to prevent all of this from happening again."
Arthur: "There is. Move to Illinois."
Jack: "I think he's pulling your leg, Serena."
"There comes a time in every political life when a man has to risk getting a couple over easy right in the kisser."
"I argued that the Constitution should not only stop dead in its tracks, it should revert back two centuries."
"Scientists start babling on about the double helix and the jury starts thinking about lunch."
"What happened to the old Southern hospitality?"
(to Branch): "You can rewrite judicial history when you're elected to the Supreme Court."
Serena: "I never knew men could be so insecure."
Jack: "I once followed a girlfriend to a party, just to be sure."
"Fighting an insurance company -- now that's suicide."
"I auure you, Your Honor, Mr. Preuss did not steal Vance Grodie's organizer in order to beef up his Christmas card list."
(to Melnick): "When you argue, I have this compulsive need to argue back."
Serena: "What if the first note said Mark Featherstone? What if it said 50 Brook Road?"
Jack: "What if it said he wanted a case full of Snickers bars?"
"I love a happy ending, Arthur, but didn't you just change the topic in the middle of our conversation?"
Preuss: "Do you think I'm stupid?"
Jack: "The jury's still out on that, Mr. Preuss."
"This has to be a first. A lawyer's neglience benefiting his case."
"He cheated . . . at his chosen profession. He cheated . . . at life. And now he's trying to cheat the justice system. But you have to ask yourselves, it is really justice if it's obtained fraudently? Can cheating become its own defense for murder?"
Skoda: "Look, there was a lot of pressure on him."
Jack: "There's a lot of pressure on me."
"In this country, weird is allowed."
Serena: "It realy makes my day when a mother kills her son for no reason whatsoever."
Jack: "Call Hallmark. Maybe they'll print up a special card."
Serena: "None of this would be admissable if I hadn't pulled that stunt in surrogate's court."
Arthur: "I seem to recall giving you the old 'atta-girl.'"
Jack: "I didn't."
"The problem is now I have to go into court and argue that thir woman belongs behind bars, even though she killed her son only to prevent him from killing three housewives, four salesmen, two plumbers, etc, etc, etc."
Arthur: "Looks like this guy's going to clear all of our open cases."
Jack: "While his mother becomes a folk hero for pushing to 'off' button on a killing machine."
"He killed at least two people. I'm sure the prison system would have been glad to have him."
Serena: "You gotta give Dworkin credit. At least he enjoys his work."
Jack: "There's a compaint box outside Branch's office, Serena."
Jack: "The facts are against you, argue the law. Law's against you, charm the jury."
Serena: "Gee, was that charm? I thought it was just buffoonery."
Jack: "Buffoons don't clerk for federal judges."
"Let me remind you, Counselor, this is not a game."
Serena: "If the court will allow us some time to review our strategy?"
Jack: "What's the difference since we're making up the law as we go along anyways?"
"I was dancing as fast as I could."
"Mr. Dworkin is a first rate attorney. Hell, he's a magician. He put the facts into a box, sawed the box in half, anad out popped thousands of years of the most despicable hatred known to man. Like any good magician, he kept you busy with what he was saying, hoping you wouldn't notice what he was doing with his hands, hoping you wouldn't catch him trying to hide a corpse. . . trying to make a murdered man disappear. I'm betting you saw through the trick, so the only question is will you pretend it worked, or will you make this illusion disappear? One bookie killed another bookie. That's it. Period. The defense hardly bothers to say otherwise. Mr. Dworkin just now all but said his client killed Mr. Meeks. Not once did he say Mr. Strelzik was innocent. Like I say, he's a good attorney. He knows no one would believe him. Instead, he had the deeply offensive idea to use your sympathy for Israel to put a killer back on the street. Mr. Dworkin wants you to choose culture over citizenship, visceral hatred over codified laws. He's counting on at least one of you saying to yourself 'I'm a Jew first, and only after that, an American.' I asked you back when you were selected for this job whether you could look at the facts presented without passion or prejudice and each one of you swore under oath that you could. I know it's hard, but if you don't . . . all of this . . . is meaningless."
Defense Lawyer: "So, if you talk to God, you're pious, and if he talks back, you're crazy?"
Jack: "You said it, I didn't."
"There's nothing quite like walking into trial with an uncontested confession."
"Smile, Serena. This is our Inherit the Wind. This is where we get to prove in a court of law that there is no big guy up there with a white beard pulling invisible strings."
"He really screwed the pooch this time, didn't he?!"
"Tommy Sudor. He lived two doors down from us on Daman Ave. He was a couple years older than me and as far back as I can remember, I followed him around like a puppy. A VA hospital in 1968 was no place for a puppy. It was pretty grisly and it smelled bad. The boy in the bed biside Tommy's had already passed away. Tommy's right leg was somewhere in the basement. What was left of his face was tar paper. I squeezed in biside a priest who's urging Tommy to make a deathbed confession of his sins. Tommy smiles with th part of his mouth that still works and says "What difference would it make?" Priset moves on to the next bed and Tommy says to me, "God forgive me if I'm wrong." I think that was the last thing he ever said. Took a lot of guts. I thought he was right. Me, I'm still tagging along after Tommy."
"I'm sorry, your honor, I don't know what to say. I've heard some whoppers on the stand, but this one beggars the imagination."
Serena: "Do you really think he told Anne-Marie about the murder?"
Jack: "I think she proved his point. This time, there actually was someone out to get him."
"I don't know who was more shocked, Simkus or me."
Skoda: "I've barely scratched the surface."
Jack: "After eight hours?"
"Analyse him, Emil, not me."
"Your hypotheticals are better served in the classroom, Ira."
(to Ira Simkus): "You like hypotheticals, how's this: Bobby Redburn kills Clay Warner. Would you still be fighting to keep him alive?"
Jack: "Then Clay Warner is a genius?"
Nelson Lambert: "Yes, he is."
Jack: "Then who are we, Sir, to question his decision now?"
Jack: "Now if Clay Warner dies, it's because I wanted him dead."
Aurthur: "It's not you, Jack, it's the law."
Jack: "Words on a page."
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