"Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape..."
"Lemonade in the middle of morning was a summertime ritual."
"Miss Maudie hated her house: time spent indoors was time wasted. She was a widow, a chameleon lady who worked in her flower beds in an old straw hat and men's coveralls, but after her five o'clock bath she would appear on the porch and reign over the street in magesterial beauty.
She loved everything that grew in God's earth, even the weeds. With one exception. If she found a blade of nut-grass in her yard it was like the Second Battle of the Marne; she swooped down upon it with a tin tub and subjected it to blasts from beneath with a poisonous substance she said was so powerful it'd kill us all if we didn't stand out of the way."
"People in their right minds never take pride in their talents."
"It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name."
"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."
"Aunty had a way of declaring What Is Best For The Family..."
