Then a lady flounced up and perched on the seat opposite. She had a full bird on the wing sewn to the crown of her hat, and she was painted up like a circus pony, so we took her to be from Chicago.

The sobs came then, faster than she could swallow. A teacher dares not cry, not a real teacher.

I am here to help her learn,” Tansy said, “not to keep her from it.

We’d gotten him wrong. He wasn’t a dunce. He was an artist. According to these pages, he’d seen us all a good deal clearer than we’d ever seen him.

A Seth Thomas steeple clock stood on a high shelf. When it struck ten, Grandma jerked awake. She looked around the room astonished. It was her belief that she never slept, not even in bed.

We had to scramble for seats in the day coach, lugging one straw valise between us and a gallon jug of lemonade. And a thermos bottle of the kind the Spanish-American War soldiers carried, with our own well water for brushing our teeth. We’d heard that St. Louis water comes straight out of the Mississippi River, and there’s enough silt in it to settle at the bottom of the glass. We’d go to their fair, but we weren’t going to drink their water.

Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school.

Stay away from people who don’t know who they are but want you to be just like them. People who’ll want to label you. People who’ll try to write their fears on your face.

We thought he was weird. He thought we were weird. It was great. It was what multiculturalism ought to be” -Archer.

She had eyes in the back of her heart.