“I want to thank him for not making me say a word, and getting it all the same, but I just remain silent as the sun pours heat and light, as if from a pitcher, all over our bewildered heads.”

“Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I don’t want my boy starting out with something like this over his head. Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. Let the county come and bring sandwiches. I don’t want him growing up with a whisper about him, I don’t want anybody saying, ‘Jem Finch… his daddy paid a mint to get him out of that.”

“Soldiers in the heat of battle; death-row prisoners; explorers stranded in deserts, jungles, on mountaintops; anyone sick or lost or just tired and bewildered: we all wanted our mothers.”

“He rises over me, a second sun, and fills me with light and heat.”

“I felt as if the Milky Way, hovering above our heads like a celestial pitcher, had suddenly overturned, pouring suns and planets down my throat. Stars seemed to be shooting out of my finger and toes, the ends of my hair.”

“We thank Him less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. It is our emptiness in the presence of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him.”