“Walter Parmenter sometimes seemed to his daughter a restless subterranean force held together by rituals.”

“He held his hands tightly together and cursed his daughter for bringing the terrible world, with its humiliation and longing, back to his door.”

“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.”

“Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.”

“They seemed so united that I loved them as one person." Lee wrote of his son and daughter-in-law on his daughter-in-law's death.”

“The longer they were together the more doubtful seemed the nature of his regard, and sometimes for a few painful minutes she believed it to be no more than friendship”