To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

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.

“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. 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.”

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.”

“If he’s not he should be by now. The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets—”

Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.

Can’t anybody tell what I’m gonna do lest they know me, can they, Scout?”

One was the figure of a boy, the other wore a crude dress.

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.

“Atticus, are we going to win it?” “No, honey.”

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” Atticus said.

“It’s different this time,” he said. “This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they’re still our friends and this is still our home.”

Then Christmas came and disaster struck.

Aunty was a good cook was some compensation for being forced to spend a religious holiday with Francis Hancock.

Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there.

“Don’t pay any attention to her, Jack. She’s trying you out. Cal says she’s been cussing fluently for a week, now.”

I was proceeding on the dim theory, aside from the innate attractiveness of such words, that if Atticus discovered I had picked them up at school he wouldn’t make me go.

You want to grow up to be a lady, don’t you?” I said not particularly.

The Daughters’ Staircase was in the ground-floor bedroom of their parents, so Simon always knew the hours of his daughters’ nocturnal comings and goings.

“Of course I will, baby. I know of no hand I would be more delighted to tie up. Will you come this way?”

What bothers me is that she and Jem will have to absorb some ugly things pretty soon.

without catching Maycomb’s usual disease.

I never heard Atticus say like a picture of what.

“Don’t you contradict me!” Mrs. Dubose bawled. “And you—” she pointed an arthritic finger at me—“what are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady! You’ll grow up waiting on tables if somebody doesn’t change your ways—a Finch waiting on tables at the O.K. Café—hah!”

By that time I was shrieking. Jem yanked my hair, said he didn’t care, he’d do it again if he got a chance, and if I didn’t shut up he’d pull every hair out of my head. I didn’t shut up and he kicked me.

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 felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for her?” Mr. Gilmer seemed ready to rise to the ceiling. The witness realized his mistake and shifted uncomfortably in the chair. But the damage was done. Below us, nobody liked Tom Robinson’s answer. Mr. Gilmer paused a long time to let it sink in.

“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 the safest folks in the world,” said Miss Maudie. “We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us.”

Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we’re making a step—it’s just a baby-step, but it’s a step.”

“Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take.

There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried.

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.”

Don’t fool yourselves—it’s all adding up and one of these days we’re going to pay the bill for it. I hope it’s not in you children’s time.”

I learned more about the poor Mrunas’ social life from listening to Mrs. Merriweather: they had so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family. A child had as many fathers as there were men in the community, as many mothers as there were women. J. Grimes Everett was doing his utmost to change this state of affairs, and desperately needed our prayers.

Thus began our longest journey together.