To Kill A Mockingbird

“I'm little but I'm old.”

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.”

“There are just some kind of men who- who're so busy worrying about the next world
they've never learned to live in this one.”

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”

“I didn't know how you were going to do it, but from now on I'll never worry about what'll become of you, son, you'll always have an idea.”

“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change. It's a good one, even if it does resist learning.”

“I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.”

“Well, in the first place you never stopped to gimme a chance to tell you my side of it- you just lit right into me. When Jem an' I fuss Atticus doesn't ever just listen to Jem's side of it, he hears mine too.”

“When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.”

“I shall never marry, Atticus.”
“Why?”
“I might have children.”

“Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it.”

“Atticus, you've never laid a hand on her.”
“I admit that. So far I've been able to get by with threats. Jack, she minds me as well as she can. Doesn't come up to scratch half the time, but she tries.”
“That's not the answer,” said Uncle Jack.
“No, the answer is she knows I know she tries. That's what makes the difference.”

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

“It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.”

“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”

“It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.”

“With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.”

“I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work.”

“I must have slept a long time, for when I was punched awake the room was dim with the light of the setting moon. “Move over, Scout.” “He thought he had to.” I mumbled. “Don't stay mad with him.” Dill got in bed beside me. “I ain't,” he said. “I just wanted to sleep with you.”

“...I found myself wondering what life would be if Jem were different, even from what he was now; what I would do if Atticus did not feel the necessity of my presence, help and advice. Why, he couldn't get along a day without me. Even Calpurnia couldn't get along unless I was there. They needed me.”

“He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of gray house with sad brown doors.”

“Dill?”
“Mm?”
Why do you reckon Boo Radleys never run off?”
Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.
“Maybe he doesn't have anywhere to run off to”

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”

“I try to give'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason.”

“You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.”

“Cry about the simple hell people give other people- without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give coloured folks, without even stopping to think that they're people too.”

“One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious — because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe — some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others — some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.
But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.
In the name of God, believe him.”

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.”

“How could they do it, how could they?”
“I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it- seems that only children weep. Good night.”

“Things are always better in the morning.”

“Things are never as bad as they seem.”

“I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.”

“Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.”
“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”
“The way you tell it, it is.”




“I think I'll be a clown when I get grown,' said Dill.
Jem and I stopped in our tracks.
Yes sir, a clown,' he said. 'There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.'
You got it backwards, Dill,' said Jem. 'Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them.'
Well I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.”

“It’s like bein’ a caterpillar in a cocoon, that’s what it is ... Like somethin’ asleep wrapped up in a warm place. I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that’s what they seemed like”

“They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.”

“As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.”

“You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't.”

“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
Jem turned around and punched his pillow. When he settled back his face was cloudy. He was going into one of his declines, and I grew wary. His brows came together; his mouth became a thin line. He was silent for a while.
“That's what I thought, too,” he said at last, “when I was your age. If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time... it's because he wants to stay inside.”“We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.”

“I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them unless I was forced to.”

“Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.”

“Daylight...In my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighbourhood was busy. Miss Stephenie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over the azaleas.
It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him. It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention.
It was fall and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. The boy helped his sister to her feet and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woe's and triymph's on their face. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled apprehensive.
Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and show a dog.
Summer, and he watched his children's heart break.
Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him.”

“Neighbours bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbour. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbours give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.”

“Nothin’s real scary except in books.”

“Atticus, he was real nice."
"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”