It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

... you must not expect to find that people understand what they do.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.

It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary

I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.

They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.