My anger at being robbed becomes evidence of the very instability they’ve alleged.

It is the perfect trap, because the more forcefully the victim protests, the more he seems to prove their case.

They had not just tried to take my house.

They had tried to take my standing to say the house was mine — to reach inside the machinery of the law and quietly disconnect the one wire that ran from my mouth to the truth.

I had spent my whole life believing that a man who told the truth plainly would, in the end, be believed.