Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.

You can pet him, Mr. Arthur. He's asleep.

I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.

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.

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.

Things are always better in the morning.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.