Cheater's Game Quotes

“Helmets neither cause concussions nor prevent them,” she said. “Even helmeted, on impact, the brain slides around like a bowl of Jell-O, twisting and stretching until it smacks into the corpus callosum.”
― Paul Levine, Cheater's Game

“I admired Bolden’s abilities. I’ve long thought that a good prosecutor is a well-trained union carpenter building a sturdy house with shiny tools and freshly hewn wood. She follows blueprints to the letter, makes sure the framing is in plumb, lines up the two-by-fours, and hammers the nails straight. The best courtroom carpenters are Renaissance men and women. They double as bricklayers, installers, tapers, finishers, electricians, and even plumbers. They can build the whole damn house, and it’s a thing of beauty that will pass the toughest inspection by city inspectors . . . or juries. Until the defense lawyers come along. We’re the stealthy vandals wielding crowbars and spray paint. We tear down door frames, break windows, and spray graffiti on the walls. Our job is to destroy what the carpenters have built and feed it into the woodchipper.”
― Paul Levine, Cheater's Game

“Your favorite.” She had marinated the fish filets in a mixture of tequila, lime juice, and orange liqueur, with a touch of olive oil and garlic. Now, she spooned a sauce of tomato, jalapeno, onion, and brown sugar over the cooked fish.”
― Paul Levine, Cheater's Game

“and parked adjacent to a regulation-size basketball”
― Paul Levine, Cheater's Game

“You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.”
― Paul Levine, Cheater's Game

“She expertly sliced open a ripe mango, then twisted the pit until it popped out of the fruit.”
― Paul Levine, Cheater's Game

“Federal judges are kings and queens. They are appointed for life. No messy elections, no grubbing for lawyers’ campaign contributions. They sit on thrones above the lowly members of their kingdom and are served by a royal retinue of law clerks, judicial assistants, court clerks, jury clerks, courtroom deputies, administrators, and, for all I know, court jesters.”
― Paul Levine, CHEATER'S GAME

“You raise your child the best you can. You release the child into the world, like launching a toy sailboat in a pond. Except the world is not a placid pond. More often, it is a raging sea, and life a perfect storm of the unexpected crashing head-on into the unbearable. There is no way to prepare the child for such a world because your own personal crises, traumas and failures are just that, your own. Your child, as you will belatedly learn, is not you.”
― Paul Levine, CHEATER'S GAME

“You leave a little bit of yourself behind in every case,” Ray Pincher said. “Not that you want to, but that the practice of law demands it.”
“True enough,” I said. “There’s a lot of me smeared on a lot of courtroom floors.”
― Paul Levine, CHEATER'S GAME

“In a society without shame, where faking it is making it and deceit trumps virtue, integrity is for losers and cheaters win. Fairness? Forget about it! A meritocracy? In your dreams! Earn your diploma? Why bother, when you can buy it?”
― Paul Levine, CHEATER'S GAME

“As much as we prize our commitment to the individual and pay lip service to the presumption of innocence, it’s the government’s courthouse, the government’s prosecutor, and the government’s judge. Every time you go to trial, you are the Miami Dolphins playing an away game against the Patriots in a January blizzard.”
― Paul Levine, CHEATER'S GAME