John Grisham Quotes

Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school, and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it's boring. But if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order.

I think crime writing is my link with trying to preserve a sort of order.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

The rehabilitation of order as a universal principle, however, suggested at the same time that orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the nature of organized systems in general or for those created by man in particular.

Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.

I did say that in-group, authority and purity are necessary for the maintenance of order, but I would never give them a blanket endorsement.

The organization of order is not the exclusive monopoly of the State

Wherever there are men, there will be parties; and wherever there are free men they will make themselves heard. Those of firm health and spirits are unwilling to cede more of their liberty than is necessary to preserve order; those of feeble constitutions will wish to see one strong arm able to protect them from the many. These are the Whigs and Tories of nature…

No true and perfect human society can be conceived which is not governed by some supreme authority…. Do the sheep when they are all assembled together rule and guide the shepherd?

Girls, in particular, use storytelling to establish hierarchies, a pecking order. There is a sort of jockeying of who is in charge of shared history.

So far, the biggest regret I have in regards to the world of 'Red Queen' is that I didn't get to world-build enough. I don't think I did enough work explaining how the world came to be, and while I'm planning to go more into it, I'm a greedy writer, and I'm always going to wish I had more room to delve into the complexities of a fantasy realm.

There happened in the Middle Ages what has happened so often since then. Those who were the beneficiaries of the established order were bent on defending it, not so much, perhaps, because it guaranteed their interests, as because it seemed to them indispensable to the preservation of society.

Creating senates, the French critics said, implied that there was another social order besides the people represented in the houses of representatives. [John] Adams actually agreed with that implication and argued that the aristocracy and the people had to have separate houses; this was the only way the power of the aristocracy could be contained.

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.

Aristocrats might shrug, but commoners, dreading any collapse of the social order, wanted the rules of behavior to be observed.

The more tightly packed the group, the greater the need for strict social ranks and orders.

The sudden and abrupt deletion of all individuals occupying the lower bands of the Tone Scale from the social order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would interrupt the dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered.

The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.

Filial obedience is the first and greatest requisite of a state; by this we become good subjects to our emperors, capable of behaving with just subordination to our superiors, and grateful dependents on heaven; by this we become fonder of marriage, in order to be capable of exacting obedience from others in our turn; by this we become good magistrates, for early submission is the truest lesson to those who would learn to rule. By this the whole state may be said to resemble one family.

However fiercely opposed one may be to the present order, an old respect for the idea of order itself often prevents people from distinguishing between order and those who stand for order, and leads them in practice to respect individuals under the pretext of respecting order itself.

Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.

Really, if the lower orders don't set a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor

I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.

Humans live best when each has his place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.