“I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.”

“I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.”

“He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.”

“What you hold in your hands right now, beneath these words, is consecrated air and time and sunlight and, first of all, a place.”

“I understood that the terror of my recurring dream was not about losing just vision, but the whole of myself, whatever that was. What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.”

“That's a tarantula,' he said. 'You got to watch out for them suckers. They can jump four feet. If they get you, you go crazy. It's a special kind of poison'This I didn't believe. I never could figure out why men thought they could impress a woman by making the world out to be such a big dangerous deal. I mean, we've got to live in the exact same world every damn day of the week, don't we?”

“I vow I shall give all my very best books to the underprivileged, once I have read them”