“I'm Charles Baker Harris...I can read”

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

“I think I'll be a clown when I get grown,' said Dill.Jem and I stopped in our tracks.Yes sir, a clown,' he said. 'There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.'You got it backwards, Dill,' said Jem. 'Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them.'Well I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.”

“I never loved reading until I feared I would lose it. One does not love breathing.”

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

“Until I feared I would loose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

“I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.”