More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people; Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
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 –’
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,
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.’
‘People in their right minds never take pride in their talents,
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.’
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.
people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitudes, character shading, even gestures, as having been repeated in each generation and refined by time.
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, that white man is trash.’
I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.’
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?
