“The last thing she wanted was to see her friend getting ideas in her head. There was such a lot of room in there for them to bounce around and do damage.”

“Mistress Ownens rubbed her eyes with a knuckle, then dabbed at them with her apron, and she shook her head. "Do you know what you're going to do now?" she asked."See the world," said Bod. "Get into trouble. Get out of trouble again. visit jungle and volcanoes and deserts and islands. And people. I want to meet an awful lot of people.”

“Rachel knew what she was doing. And when she didn't, she could improvise on the fly, coming up with options that left a lot of collateral damage but usually only hurt herself, not the people around her. It was one of the things he would never admit that he admired about her.”

“Ah, poor Pole. It's been to much for her, this last bit. Turned her head, I shouldn't wonder. She's beginning to see things.”

“A lady?' Jem raised his head. His face was scarlet. 'After all those things she said about you, a lady?''She was. She had her own views about things, a lot different from mine, maybe... son, I told you that if you hadn't lost your head I'd have made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her- I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.”

“But that would leave Paxton to fend for herself, and the last thing any woman wanted in this kind of situation was to look around and see all the people who could help her doing nothing.”