Mid Week Mute

• This night my mind was filled with Halloween -- there was to be a pageant representing our county's agricultural products; I was to be a ham. Jem said he would escort me to the school auditorium. Thus began our longest journey together.

•  Neighbours bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbour. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives. 

• "There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible."

• "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."

•  "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."