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.

Writing is something you'll never learn in any university or at any school. It's something that is within you, and if it isn't there, nothing can put it there.

You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.

I'm little but I'm old.

The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets -

The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.

Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write.