You can't really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.

Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.

As a reader I loathe introductions...Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.

Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy... and no money to buy it with.

Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street.

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

...in other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama Interview - March 1964