Gray Mountain QUOTES

2 " Relief, fear, and humiliation. Her parents paid for a pricey prep school education in D.C. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown with a degree in political science. She breezed through law school and finished with honors. A dozen megafirms offered her jobs after a federal court clerkship. The first twenty-nine years of her life had seen overwhelming success and little failure. To be discharged in such a manner was crushing. To be escorted out of the building was degrading. This was not just a minor bump in a long, rewarding career. "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain

4 " litigation funders are private companies that raise money from their investors to buy into big lawsuits. "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain

6 " Black lung is a legal term for a preventable, occupational lung disease. It is more formally known as coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP), and is caused by prolonged exposure to coal dust. Once coal dust is inhaled into the body it cannot be removed or discharged. It progressively builds up in the lungs and can lead to inflammation, fibrosis, even necrosis. There are two forms of the disease: “simple CWP” and “complicated CWP” (or progressive massive fibrosis). "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain

8 " every company of a certain size must have committed egregious sins to succeed in the cutthroat world of Western capitalism. "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain

10 " They say a woman marries a man with the belief she can change him, and she can’t. A man marries a woman with the belief that she won’t change, and she does. "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain

12 " he’s now in hiding, in another state. I give him cash to live on.” “Is that legal?” “That’s not a fair question in coal country. Nothing is black-and-white in my world. The enemy breaks every rule in the book, so the fight is never fair. If you play by the rules, you lose, even when you’re on the right side. "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain

14 " An old pickup truck approached from ahead, slowed, and seemed ready to stop. The driver leaned out and yelled, “Come on, Romey, not again.” The cop turned around and yelled back, “Get outta here!” The truck stopped on the center line, and the driver yelled, “You gotta stop that, man.” The cop unsnapped his holster, whipped out his black pistol, and said, “You heard me, get outta here.” The truck lurched forward, spun its rear tires, and sped away. When it was twenty yards down the road, the cop aimed his pistol at the sky and fired a loud, thundering shot that cracked through the valley and echoed off the ridges. Samantha screamed and began crying. The cop watched the truck disappear, then said, “It’s okay, it’s okay. He’s always butting in. Now, where were we?” He stuck the pistol back into the holster "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain

16 " I’ll bet you want to know how a person like Stocky can be thrown into a debtors’ prison, something this country outlawed about two hundred years ago. Right?” Samantha slowly nodded. Mattie continued, “More than likely, you’re also certain that throwing someone in jail because he cannot pay a fine or a fee violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. And, you are no doubt familiar with the 1983 Supreme Court decision, the name escapes me right now, in which the Court ruled that before a person can be thrown in jail for not paying a fine it must be proven that he or she was willfully not paying. In other words, he could pay but he refused. All this and more, right? "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain

18 " Who’ll try it?” Samantha asked. "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain

20 " Her father had learned only one thing in prison. Not humility, nor patience, nor understanding...Marshall Kofer had learned to listen, at least to his daughter". "

― John Grisham , Gray Mountain