No, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. Yourself.

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.

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.