“Shocked, because even though I was embarrassed by the way Paul talked sometimes, I secretly loved it, I turned back to them to find Paul’s blue eyes on me, with laughter and affection. “I say it ‘cause I want you to hear it. If I write it, will you read it?”

“No. I’ll call you Monday after class.” Morgan slid of his stool, gazed seriously at Dan, then bent forward to bestow a chaste kiss to his cheek. Danny watched him leave, bemused.Griff snickered. “Ohh, Danny. A cute boy kissed you. Are you ever going to wash that cheek again?”

“Oh, fuck. He loved Mischa? Since fucking when did he fall in love on twenty-four hour’s notice? His heart shrugged, his dick applauded and his brain shriveled up and ran for a darker corner. That made his choice all the clearer, didn’t it”

“You make me love books and the words inside them, because they talk about you. I know they do, they tell me that I love you, not as cliché as I write it, but in the warmest, deepest, calmest words I could ever read. I love you, like the books say it. And I'll find a better way to say it one day.”

“You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.”

“Do you defend niggers, Atticus?" I asked him that evening."Of course I do. Don't say nigger, Scout. That's common.""'s what everybody at school says.""From now on it'll be everybody less one--""Well if you don't want me to grow up talkin' that way, why do you send me to school?”

“If this thing's hushed up it'll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I've tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.. if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn't meet his eye, and the day I can't do that I'll know I've lost him. I don't want to lose him and Scout, because they're all I've got.”