Could you just imagine? If every suicide rose–think of Faulkner’s Quentin Compson as a vampire. I don’t hate the South I don’t I don’t. She wondered how they’d have worked it out in Cambridge when...

No, I’m from the South, remember? We get snow when we’ve done something to upset God, which we don’t do very often.

The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved Southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call!

Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three...

True, beneath the human façade, I was an interloper, an alien whose ship had crashed beyond hope of repair in the backwoods of Southern Appalachia—but at least I’d learned to walk and talk enough like...