“After ten forevers Dr. Reynolds returned.”

“What happened after that had a dreamlike quality: in a dream I saw the jury return, moving like underwater swimmers, and Judge Taylor's voice came from far away, and was tiny. I saw something only a lawyer's child could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun was empty.”

“Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.”

“I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin' after you.”

“Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”

“But at supper that evening after I asked him to pass the damn ham, please, Uncle Jack pointed at me. 'See me afterwards young lady,' he said.”

“Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.”