I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin' I can do it.

Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.

You can choose your friends, but you sho' can't choose your family.

Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.

Somewhere, I had received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could with the sense they had, but Aunt Alexandra was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it was.

There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible.

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.