"Lawyers are fucked up in complicated and interesting ways. Pop culture is lousy with lawyers: heroic underdogs, scheming villains, charm-deficient disasters. But when we meet a lawyer in real life, especially a corporate lawyer, most of us can’t get away fast enough. I remember the effect I used to have at parties when I came out with my calling. The widening eyes, the rearing back, the vague: “Oh, yeah?” The rapid departure for the drinks table. We’ve made our collective judgment: corporate lawyers are deadly bores or aggressive assholes. Sometimes both.

"But lawyers are often so much more. They’re extremely smart, but often clueless about the world. They’re profoundly neurotic and highly articulate—in other words, crazy and unable to stop talking about it. They’re great compartmentalizers. They curse beautifully, drink excessively. Many of them write poetry, or make music—and they’re wide and voracious readers. They’re often deeply unhappy, but for interesting reasons: because they failed at what they really wanted to do, or were too afraid to try, or because they’re self-aware enough to perceive their own failings but helpless to fix them. The disconnect between appearance and reality in lawyers is profound. Scratch the staid, careful surface of the most upstanding member of the bar, and you just may find a raging, maniacal, fascinating heart." - Eliza Kennedy

Is it weird that this is strangely comforting to me? Like, if I could just get semi-naturally herded in with all the other boring weird people who are manic just below the surface, that would be one of the biggest reliefs of my life. Also, is it just me or is saying someone curses beautifully and drinks excessively a weird messed up, huge compliment to give to someone in a Robert Downey Jr kind of way?