The Rainmaker Quotes

“Don't compromise yourself - you're all you have.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“Some people have more guts than brains.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“I'm alone and outgunned, scared and inexperienced, but I'm right.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“Please give me fifty more years of work and fun, then an instant death when I'm sleeping.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“I don't feel stupid, just inadequate. After three years of studying the law, I'm very much aware of how little I know.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“A battered wife is a married woman until she gets a divorce. Or until she kills the bastard.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“All students enter law school with a certain amount of idealism and desire to serve the public, but after three years of brutal competition we care for nothing but the right job with the right firm where we can make partner in seven years and earn big bucks.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“The coffee arrives, and we backslide into what lawyers do best---talking about other lawyers.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“life is too short to despise people who simply can't help what they've done.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“He's my client, and he's counting on me. I'll take him, warts and all.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“There are few things in life worse than a long-winded lawyer.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“We cuss them because we're not good enough for them. We hate them because they wouldn't look at us, couldn't be bothered to give us an interview. I guess there's a Trent & Brent in every city, in every field. I didn't make it and I don't belong, so I'll just go through life hating them.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“The company later went broke, and of course all blame was directed at the lawyers. Not once did I hear any talk that maybe a trace of mismanagement could in any way have contributed to the bankruptcy.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“Anyone can cook a trout. The real art is in hooking the damned thing.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“I am motivated by thoughts of my sorrowful little client and the screwing that he got. I'm the only lawyer Donny Ray has, and it will take much more than paper to slow me down.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“It takes just one, he says over and over. You hear that all the time in this business. One big case, and you can retire. That's one reason lawyers do so many sleazy things, like full-color ads in the yellow pages, and billboards, and placards on city buses, and telephone solicitation. You hold your nose, ignore the stench of what you're doing, ignore the snubs and snobbery of big-firm lawyers, because it takes only one.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“F. Franklin the Fourth has a job with a firm rich in heritage, money and pretentiousness, a firm vastly superior to Brodnax and Speer. His sidekicks at the moment are W. Harper Whittenson, an arrogant little snot who will, thankfully, leave Memphis and practice with a mega-firm in Dallas; J. Townsend Gross, who has accepted a position with another huge firm; and James Straybeck, a sometimes friendly sort who's suffered three years of law school without an initial to place before his name or numerals to stick after it. With such a short name, his future as a big-firm lawyer is in jeopardy. I doubt if he'll make it.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“Like a snake creeping through the undergrowth, I sneak into the law school well past noon and hours after both of my scheduled classes have broken up.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“I can feel the competition here, very much like the first few weeks of law school when we were terribly concerned with each other's initial progress. I nod at a few acquaintances, silently hoping they flunk the exam because they're silently hoping I Collapse too. Such is the nature of the profession.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“SUDDEN AFFLUENCE triggers a desire for the better things in life.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“Deck has reduced the Canons of Ethics to the Big Three: Fight for your client, don’t steal, try not to lie.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“Law school is nothing but three years of wasted stress. We spend countless hours digging for information we’ll never need. We are bombarded with lectures that are instantly forgotten. We memorize cases and statutes which will be reversed and amended tomorrow. If I’d spent fifty hours a week for the past three years training under a good lawyer, then I would be a good lawyer. Instead, I’m a nervous third-year student afraid of the simplest of legal problems and terrified of my impending bar exam.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“makes good grades, and”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“preferred means of treatment that no one but a quack would claim”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“for showing up,”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“I’m sure that if I stay in this business I’ll one day think of a dirtier trick, but one’s hard to imagine now.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker