To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play by himself behind the car-house.

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 –’

‘Foot-washers believe anything that’s pleasure is a sin.

Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of – oh, of your father.’

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, and you can look down the street and see the results.’

The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets –’

Furthermore, had it never occurred to us that the civil way to communicate with another being was by the front door instead of a side window?

‘Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,’

Atticus so rarely asked Jem and me to do something for him, I could take being called a coward for him.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand … I just hope that Jem and Scout come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town. I hope they trust me enough … Jean Louise?’

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’

‘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.’

God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things.

‘People in their right minds never take pride in their talents,’ said Miss Maudie.

You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.’

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.

I thought the only explanation for what he did was that for a few minutes he simply went mad.

‘They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,’ said Atticus, ‘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.’

Ivanhoe

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.

With him, life was routine, without him, life was unbearable.

‘But Cal, you know better,’ I said. ‘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. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.’

Atticus answered both questions in the affirmative. ‘How’d you like for her to come live with us?’ I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.

Somewhere, I had received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could with the sense they had, but Aunt Alexandra was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it was.

rape was carnal knowledge of a female by force and without consent.

In Maycomb, grown men stood outside in the front yard for only two reasons: death and politics.

they did the best they could with the sense they had,

I was beginning to notice a subtle change in my father these days, that came out when he talked with Aunt Alexandra. It was a quiet digging in, never outright irritation. There was a faint starchiness in his voice when he said: ‘Anything fit to say at the table’s fit to say in front of Calpurnia. She knows what she means to this family.’

The court appointed Atticus to defend him. Atticus aimed to defend him. That’s what they didn’t like about it. It was confusing.

With his infinite capacity for calming turbulent seas, he could make a rape case as dry as a sermon.

never heard Atticus raise his voice in my life, except to a deaf woman.

Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don’t already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food. Do it, and you’ll often get an answer you don’t want, an answer that might wreck your case.

‘I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honoured code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well the enormity of her offence, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. She persisted, and her subsequent reaction is something that all of us have known at one time or another. She did something every child has done – she tried to put the evidence of her offence away from her. But in this case she was no child hiding stolen contraband: she struck out at her victim – of necessity she must put him away from her – he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offence.

A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.

‘I’m not bitter, just tired. I’m going to bed.’ ‘Atticus –’ said Jem bleakly. He turned in the doorway. ‘What, son?’ ‘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.’

‘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.’

‘Don’t fret, Jem. 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.’

He told me havin’ a gun around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you.’

So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there. You understand?’

We generally get the juries we deserve.

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.’

Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home –?’

Atticus smiled. ‘You’re getting so big now, I’ll just have to hold a part of you.’

Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed.

He’ll settle down when the weather changes.’

Jem was becoming almost as good as Atticus at making you feel right when things went wrong.

– why, if we followed our feelings all the time we’d be like cats chasin’ their tails.

Atticus, he was real nice …’ His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. ‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.’