You've Really Got To Start Hitting The

I Remember When My Daddy Gave Me That Gun. He Told Me That I Should Never Point It At Anything In The House; And That He'd Rather I'd Shoot At Tin Cans In The Backyard. But He Said That Sooner Or Later He Supposed The Temptation To Go After Birds Would Be Too Much, And That I Could Shoot All The Blue Jays I Wanted - If I Could Hit 'em; But To Remember It Was A Sin To Kill A Mockingbird.

Any Writer Worth His Salt Writes To Please Himself...it's A Self-exploratory Operation That Is Endless. An Exorcism Of Not Necessarily His Demon, But Of His Divine Discontent.

Now, 75 Years Later In An Abundant Society Where People Have Laptops, Cell Phones, Ipods, And Minds Like Empty Rooms, I Still Plod Along With Books. Instant Information Is Not For Me. I Prefer To Search Library Stacks Because When I Work To Learn Something, I Remember It. And, Oprah, Can You Imagine Curling Up In Bed To Read A Computer? Weeping For Anna Karenina And Being Terrified By Hannibal Lecter, Entering The Heart Of Darkness With Mistah Kurtz, Having Holden Caulfield Ring You Up — Some Things Should Happen On Soft Pages, Not Cold Metal.

If This Thing's Hushed Up It'll Be A Simple Denial To Jem Of The Way I've Tried To Raise Him. Sometimes I Think I'm A Total Failure As A Parent, But I'm All They've Got. Before Jem Looks At Anyone Else He Looks At Me, And I've Tried To Live So I Can Look Squarely Back At Him.. If I Connived At Something Like This, Frankly I Couldn't Meet His Eye, And The Day I Can't Do That I'll Know I've Lost Him. I Don't Want To Lose Him And Scout, Because They're All I've Got.

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.