As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.

I don't hafta take his sass

I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.

There are just some kind of men…who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one.

I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin' I can do it.

I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.

Turtles don't feel, stupid," said Jem. "Were you ever a turtle, huh?