“In kindegarten, he had learned how to make a bruise stop hurting: you pressed it over and over with your thumb. the first times it hurt so much your eyes watered. The second time it hurt a little l...”

“All their lives Nath had understood, better than anyone, the lexicon of their family, the things they could never truly explain to outsiders: that a book or a dress meant more than something to rea...”

“When a long, long time later, he stares down at the silent blue marble of the earth and thinks of his sister, as he will at every important moment of his life. He doesn't know this yet, but he sens...”

“Hannah, as if she understood her place in the cosmos, grew from quiet infant to watchful child: a child fond of nooks and corners, who curled up in closets, behind sofas, under dangling tablecloths...”

“But at that moment she had known, with a certainty she would never feel about anything else in her life, that it was right, that she wanted this man in her life. Something inside her said, He under...”

“By tomorrow Marilyn would forget this moment: Lydia's shout, the shattered edges in her tone. It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth...”

“We look at each other a second. " I'm tired of the rules," I say. Aibileen chuckles and looks out the window. I realise how thin this revelation must sound to her.”

“In terms of sex between same-sex partners, the objection that "the parts don't fit" doesnt make sense on even the most logical level. If the parts didn't work together, frankly, people wouldn't be ...”

“It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our own beliefs so that we can dispassion...”