"To Kill a Mocking Bird"

Harper Lee studied law, no wonder. The injustice moved me less than I expected, but her depiction of being a child in a southern town is truly classic.

• Ladies... by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
• Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes.
• North Alabama was full of Liquor Interests, Big Mules, steel companies, Republicans, professors, and other persons of no background.
• Little Chuck grinned broadly. "There ain't no need to fear a cootie, ma'am. Ain't you ever seen one? Now don't you be afraid, you just go back to your desk and teach us some more."
• With a click of her tongue (Miss Maudie) thrust out her bridgework, a gesture of cordiality that cemented our friendship.
• The back yard... was covered with a feeble layer of soggy snow. "We shouldn't walk about in it," said Jem. "Look, every step you take's wasting it."
• "Son, I can't tell what you're going to be - an engineer, a lawyer, or a portrait painter. You've perpetrated a near libel here in the front yard. We've got to disguise this (snowman)."
• "People in their right minds never take pride in their talents," said Miss Maudie.
• With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.
• Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.
• Blackstone's Commentaries / the whole boiling of you
• The remainder of the afternoon went by in the gentle gloom that descends when relatives appear.
• Aunt Alexandra: let any moral come along and she would upload it; she was born in the objective case; she was an incurable gossip.
• "From rape to riot to runaways," we heard him chuckle. "I wonder what the next two hours will bring."
• (Dill) preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies.
• Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.
• "Background doesn't mean Old Family," said Jem. "I think it's how long your family's been readin' and writin'."... "Imagine Aunty being proud her great-grandaddy could readn and' write - ladies pick funny things to be proud of."
• the ease and grace with which (Calpurinia) handled heavy loads of dainty things.
• Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere, but this feeling was what Aunt Alexandra called being "spoiled".