Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time.

Now...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.

"When they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..." His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

Never, never, never on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby food. Do it, and you'll often get an answer you don't want.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.