When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.

Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.

Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward.

As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn't much else for us to learn, except possibly algebra.

Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do.

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.

There was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus's vest front. I buried my head in it and listened to the small internal noises that went on behind the light blue cloth: his watch ticking, the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of his breathing. 'Your stomach's growling,' I said. 'I know it,' he said.