Susan Downey Quotes

The dispute is still before the judge.

The jury could get the case as early as next week, but the defense says they just want to introduce one last-minute load of crap.

We go to the opening arguments or the closing arguments of a case, and we'd see which actor got the big one. I had a seven-page one once which just about killed me, and I thought, 'Oh, I'm going to get fired, that's it, I can't do it.' It was like a one-act play, and I had a few weeks to learn it, luckily. But it's terrifying.

A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.

I really do think that if we had lost that case we would really live in a country that would be really quite different.

The land of litigation, the courts are like game shows. Take what's behind the curtain the jury cries.

Where there is a will there's a law suit.

The audience that storms the box-office of the theater to gain entrance to a sensational show is small and sleepy compared with the throng that crashes the courthouse door when something concerning real life and death is to be laid bare to the public.

I don't know that I could do a procedural legal drama and spend all my time in a courtroom talking legal jargon that I don't necessarily understand.

A lot of the evidence and some of the events you see in LA Justice are loosely based on real-life cases.

I would absolutely be a litigator. I watch Court TV every day.

It's hard luck always having to be a judge.

I was always like, "I'm going to be the drunk judge who's like, 'Objection!' 'In chambers!' "

The charge is prepared; the lawyers are met; The judges all ranged (a terrible show!) I go, undismay'd. For death is a debt, A debt on demand. So take what I owe.

The world consists of imaginary people, claiming imaginary virtues and suffering from imaginary happiness.

When I present evidence, I expect the judge to hear and see all the evidence that gets presented.

The charges [government] brought against me, for example, explicitly denied my ability to make a public-interest defense.

Nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers.

I don't know a lot about politics. I like talking about human behavior. Politicians are funny to me because they often say one thing and behave a different way.

You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange wife and a fosset-seller.

Lawyers are like spiders, they've eat up all the flies, and I guess they'll have to eat each other soon.

Gettin' dressed up for court, that's a law suit

Sometimes my scripts get so dissolved, and they're so different from when I wrote them originally, that I find it hard to find what I wrote in it.

When trying a case [the famous judge] L. Cassius never failed to inquire "Who gained by it?" Man's character is such that no one undertakes crimes without hope of gain.

I did a lot of theater in school. I thought maybe I wanted to go to law school or be a judge or a politician. And then I just kind of got smitten by the process of rehearsal and working with other actors and those kinds of challenges. And then comedy.