The Last Days of Night

by Graham Moore

Even a true story is a fiction, Paul knew. It is the comforting tool we use to organize the chaotic world around us into something comprehensible. It is the cognitive machine that separates the wheat of emotion from the chaff of sensation.

“Can he do this? Can he really get the state legislature to ban my current?” “It depends.” “Damned lawyers,” grumbled Westinghouse. “Just give me a straight answer: Can he do this or can he not?”

“Thankfully, I’m on nothing stronger than a little cocaine in the mornings. It helps with the headaches.”

Think of your position as that of an…‘associate attorney,’ how about that? We’re going to build a legal factory. Men have arranged themselves into systems that produce every material, mineral, and device under the sun. Why not legal work?”

Paul would build his own “brand” as a lawyer. The name Cravath would be at the center of both the cases he was handling, a symbol of impossible difficulties handled with taste and discretion.

Paul wanted always to live in an America in which Thomas Edison would fear a smart kid in a basement whose father had harvested enough cotton that his son might harvest volts.

you, sir, are a filthy bastard whom I do not trust so far as I can throw you. Which means I can trust you to always do what is good business.”