The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 Friendship Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

This guy was real desperate for a friend because even though I wouldn't say much back to him he kept jabbering away at me all through class. (3.14)

Poor guy. Why do you think Rufus is desperate for a friend here? Why does Kenny ignore him?

Quote #2

Rufus started acting like I was his friend. In the morning on the bus he'd always come sit next to me, and Mrs. Cordell put his regular seat next to mine in school. Every day at lunchtime he followed me out to the playground and ate half of my second sandwich, then sneaked the other half to Cody. He even found out where we lived and started coming over every night around five-thirty. (3.52)

Kenny doesn't seem to be working very hard at making friends with Rufus, but Rufus is determined to become friends with Kenny anyway. Tough kid! Why do you think Rufus is so persistent? And why does Kenny share his lunch with Rufus if he doesn't really want to be his friend?

Quote #3

From the way [LJ's] pockets were sticking out it looked like he had one Tyrannosaurus Rex and one Triceratops. I couldn't tell how many he had in his socks. I figured that wasn't too bad a price for as much fun as we'd had. (3.83)

Hmmm, you probably shouldn't have to "pay" your friends to play with you. We're pretty sure that LJ was never a true friend to Kenny.