“‘It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not lady-like—in the second place, folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ’em.’”

“There was a story behind all this, but I had no desire to extract it from her then: today was Sunday, and Aunt Alexandra was positively irritable on the Lord’s Day. I guess it was her Sunday corset.”

“When Aunt Alexandra went to school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning.”