“I'm not done arguing with you, Mrs.Fletcher. I'm going to convince you yet." "Well I reckon I got ten or twenty more years in me before I pass on," Granny told him. "So feel free to take your time.”

“Granny sat down on the step and stared off into the trees. "That girl right there, she was my only child. I have lost two husbands, one by death, the other by divorce, and I have lost my parents and my brothers and sisters. But nothing ever pierced me to the core like that little girl's dying. I know it wasn't your daddy's fault. I know I messed up by filling a report to Social Services. Is that what you want to here? Is that what it takes for you not to be mad at me?”

“When I think about everything that's happened since school started, well, I don't think the word 'normal' applies to any of it. Verbena is right - I'm way past normal. Only I've realized that when you move beyond normal, the road you're on doesn't necessarily take you to the land of the abnormal or the weird or the freakish. Instead you might find yourself in a place where people build Freedom School and have the courage to live large. It's a place where people don't worry too much when they get a little goat poop on their shoes.”

“You can't expect a person to love an animal they might see decapitated at any minute. It ain't realistic," I told Miss Blue, who was gulping down her worm. She looked up at me like it shocked her to learn that some chickens got treated that way.”

“Dream girl? Ain't such a thing. You walk, you talk, you got mammary glands, well, that's gonna do it right there for most guys.”

“I like your mama,' Trena tells me. 'She seems like good people.''Smile!' my mom calls to me from across the room, and I look at her and smile. Because she is good people. And she means well, even if she does drive me crazy.”

“Quit it already. I'm pretty enough as it is.”