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Jem, who was four years my senior,
Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.
Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence.
Jem was the product of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born, and two years later our mother died from a sudden heart attack.
I did not miss her, but I think Jem did.
a job usually done by one’s parents,
“He hasn’t taught me anything, Miss Caroline. Atticus ain’t got time to teach me anything,” I added, when Miss Caroline smiled and shook her head. “Why, he’s so tired at night he just sits in the livingroom and reads.”
reading was something that just came to me,
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
He didn’t forget his lunch, he didn’t have any. He had none today nor would he have any tomorrow or the next day. He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same time in his life.
As I was the last to leave, I saw her sink down into her chair and bury her head in her arms. Had her conduct been more friendly toward me, I would have felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing.
Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’s yo’ comp’ny, and don’t you let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways like you was so high and mighty! Yo’ folks might be better’n the Cunninghams but it don’t count for nothin’ the way you’re disgracin’ ’em—if you can’t act fit to eat at the table you can just set here and eat in the kitchen!”
I desire to read this to the president of the United Staes
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—” “Sir?” “—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.
I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.
but after her five o’clock bath she would appear on the porch and reign over the street in magisterial beauty.
Savannah Rhea
“but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey 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.”
“Do you defend niggers, Atticus?” I asked him that evening. “Of course I do. Don’t say nigger, Scout. That’s common.”
“If you shouldn’t be defendin’ him, then why are you doin’ it?” “For a number of reasons,” said Atticus. “The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.” “You mean if you didn’t defend that man, Jem and me wouldn’t have to mind you any more?” “That’s about right.” “Why?” “Because I could never ask you to mind me again. Scout, simply by the nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one’s mine, I guess.
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“You’re more like Atticus than your mother,”
You want to grow up to be a lady, don’t you?” I said not particularly.
I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn’t supposed to be doing things that required pants.
I suggested that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well,
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 quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.
the answer is she knows I know she tries. That’s what makes the difference.
Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he was so old, he said he got started late, which we felt reflected upon his abilities and manliness. He was much older than the parents of our school contemporaries,
Alan
Whenever he wanted to see something well, he turned his head and looked from his right eye.
Looking with head turned - relatable
Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
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.
This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience—Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”
The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
“You aren’t really a nigger-lover, then, are you?” “I certainly am.
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.
by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.
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.
“They don’t belong anywhere. Colored folks won’t have ’em because they’re half white; white folks won’t have ’em ’cause they’re colored, so they’re just in-betweens, don’t belong anywhere.
“Well, Dill, after all he’s just a Negro.” “I don’t care one speck. It ain’t right, somehow it ain’t right to do ’em that way. Hasn’t anybody got any business talkin’ like that—it just makes me sick.”
but I cannot pity her: she is white. She
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.
“It ain’t right, Atticus,” said Jem. “No son, it’s not right.”
“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.”
They—they ’preciate what you did, Mr. Finch. They—they aren’t oversteppin’ themselves, are they?” Atticus’s eyes filled with tears. He did not speak for a moment. “Tell them I’m very grateful,” he said.
“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.”
“We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us.”
“Who?” Jem’s voice rose. “Who in this town did one thing to help Tom Robinson, just who?” “His colored friends for one thing, and people like us. People like Judge Taylor. People like Mr. Heck Tate. Stop eating and start thinking, Jem. Did it ever strike you that Judge Taylor naming Atticus to defend that boy was no accident? That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons for naming him?” This was a thought. Court-appointed defenses were usually given to Maxwell Green, Maycomb’s latest addition to the bar, who needed the experience. Maxwell Green should have had Tom Robinson’s case. “You think
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this morning Mr. Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on the post office corner, spat in his face, and told him he’d get him if it took the rest of his life.
He told me havin’ a gun around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you.”
In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. 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, that white man is trash.”
