To Kill a Mockingbird Useful Quotes 2011
Racism & Justice

“You never really understand a person until you... climb into his skin and walk around in it.” (p33)

If you learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you
consider things from his point of view... till you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” (p33)

"Scout," said Atticus, "nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything – like snot-nose. It's hard to explain – ignorant, trashy people
use it when they think somebody's favouring Negroes over and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they
want a common, ugly term to label somebody."
"You aren't really a nigger-lover, then, are you?"
"I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody... I'm hard put, sometimes – baby, 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." (p )

Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for.” (p113)

"Cal," I asked, "why do you talk nigger-talk to the – to your folks when you know it's not right?"
"Well, in the first place I'm black-"
"That doesn't mean you hafta talk that way when you know better," said Jem. […]
"It's right hard to say," she said. "Suppose you and Scout talked coloured-folks' talk at home it'd be out of place, wouldn't it? Now what if I talked
white-folks' talk at church, and with my neighbours? They'd think I was puttin' on airs to beat Moses." (p138-144)

“They don’t belong anywhere” (p177) (the part-negro children)

First Purchase church – “Negroes worshipped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays. (p130)

"That's what I thought," said Jem, "but around here once you have a drop of Negro blood, that makes you all black." (p178)

[Mr. Ewell says] "I seen that black nigger yonder ruttin' on my Mayella!" […] (p84)

"If Uncle Atticus lets you run around with stray dogs, that's his own business, like Grandma says, so it ain't your fault. I guess it ain't your fault if Uncle
Atticus is a nigger-lover besides, but I'm here to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family-" (p92)

"She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but a
strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards." (p )

There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads – they couldn't be fair if they tried. 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. […] (p243)

"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their
resentments right into a jury box." (p243) “ That white man is trash.”

Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly to folks right at home -? (p272)

"You're a mighty good fellow, it seems – did all this for not one penny?"
"Yes, suh. I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more'n the rest of 'em-"
"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. (p217)

“If you were a nigger like me, you’d be scared too.” (p215)

To Maycomb, Tom's death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger's mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future,
just run blind first chance he saw. Funny thing, Atticus Finch might've got him off scot free, but wait-? Hell no. You know how they are. Easy come,
easy go. Just shows you, that Robinson boy was legally married, they say he kept himself clean, went to church and all that, but when it comes down
to the line the veneer's mighty thin. Nigger always comes out in 'em. (p265)

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks. (p250)
Being a ‘Lady’

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. (4.119)

"Scout, I'm tellin' you for the last time, shut your trap or go home – I declare to the Lord you're gettin' more like a girl every day!" With that, I had no
option but to join them. (6.24)

I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in my life I thought of running away. Immediately. (p )

“...shouldn’t be doing anything that requires pants.” (p83)

[Cal] seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl. (p )

"For one thing, Miss Maudie can't serve on a jury because she's a woman-" .."You mean women in Alabama can't-?" I was indignant.

Aunt Alexandra looked across the room at me and smiled. She looked at a tray of cookies on the table and nodded at them. I carefully picked up the
tray and watched myself walk to Mrs. Merriweather. With my best company manners, I asked her if she would have some. After all, if Aunty could be
a lady at a time like this, so could I. (p262)

There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb (p32)

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. (p143)

Britches under her dress (p253)
Boo Radley

Jem wanted Dill to know once and for all that he wasn't scared of anything: "It's just that I can't think of a way to make him come out without him
gettin' us." Besides, Jem had his little sister to think of. (p15)

Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he
could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained – if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that
ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time. (p14)

"Well how'd you feel if you'd been shut up for a hundred years with nothin' but cats to eat?” (p52)

“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." (p251)

“...dragging him with his shy ways into the limelight – it’s a sin.” (p304)

Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley
porch was enough. (p308)

"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't
done any of those things... 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." (p309)


Scout







Every night-sound I heard from my cot on the back porch was magnified three-fold; every scratch of feet on gravel was Boo Radley seeking revenge,
every passing Negro laughing in the night was Boo Radley loose and after us; insects splashing against the screen were Boo Radley's insane fingers
picking the wire to pieces; the chinaberry trees were malignant, hovering, alive. (p61)
Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken
watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors 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. (31.23)
I drew a bead on him, remembered what Atticus had said, then dropped my fists and walked away, "Scout's a cow- ward!" ringing in my ears. It was
the first time I ever walked away from a fight.
Somehow, if I fought Cecil I would let Atticus down. Atticus so rarely asked Jem and me to do something for him, I could take being called a coward
for him. I felt extremely noble for having remembered, and remained noble for three weeks. (p85)
After my bout with Cecil Jacobs when I committed myself to a policy of cowardice, word got around that Scout Finch wouldn't fight any more, her
daddy wouldn't let her. This was not entirely correct: I wouldn't fight publicly for Atticus, but the family was private ground. I would fight anyone
from a third cousin upwards tooth and nail. (p99)
Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. 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. Aunt Alexandra's vision of my deportment involved playing with small
stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in my father's lonely
life. (p99)
With the ladies, talking about what she wants to be when she grows up. (p254)
Can’t play with Walter Cunningham “because he is trash.” (p248)
Something crushed the chicken-wire around me. Metal zipped on metal and I fell to the ground and rolled as far as I could, floundering to escape my
wire prison. ...It was slowly coming to me that there were now four people under the tree. ..But I found it and looked down to the street light. A man
was passing under it...He was carrying Jem.” (p290)
Boo saving the kids and Heck talking about it (p304) “Mr Ewell fell on his knife.” (p304)
Mockingbird

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, they 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. (p99)

I looked down and found myself clutching a brown woollen blanket I was wearing around my shoulders, squaw-fashion. (p79)

The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal. (p67)

I pulled out two small images carved in soap. One was the figure of a boy, the other wore a crude dress. (p66)

Our biggest prize appeared four days later. It was a pocket watch that wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminium knife. (p67)

Indian-heads (p38)

Gum (first gift) (p37)

When I went back, they were folded across the fence...like they were expectin’ me. And something else – Jem’s voice was flat. “Show you when we
get home. They’d been sewed up. Not like a lady sewed ‘em, like somethin’ I’d try to do. All crooked. It’s almost like – “ (p65)
Maycomb

Miss Caroline seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogs
from the time they were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature. (p18)

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. (p6)

People in the town and their characteristics. (p145)

We were playin’ strip poker up yonder by the fish-pool, he said...”Miss Rachel went off like the town fire siren: ‘Do-o-o Jee-sus Dill Harris! Gamblin’ by
my fish-pool? I’ll strip-poker you, sir! ...Atticus “ I don’t want to hear of poker in any form again.” (p61)




Burris Ewell, remember? He just goes to school the first day. The truant lady reckons she’s carried out the law when she gets his name on the roll.
(p33)
Burris Ewell was flattered by the recital. ‘Been comin’ to the first day o’ first grade fer three year now,’ he said expansively. ‘Reckon if I’m smart this
year they’ll promote me to second..’ (p30) “Ain’t no snot-nosed slut of a school teacher ever born c’n make me do nothin’!
“There ain’t no need to fear a cootie, ma’am. Ain’t you ever seen one? (p28) (on Burris Ewell)

The Cunninghams never took anything they can’t pay back – no church baskets and no scrip stamps. They never took anything off of anybody, they
get along on what they have. They don’t have much, but they get along on it. (p22)
How do you explain why the Cunninghams are different? (p250)
I asked Atticus if Mr Cunningham would even pay us. ‘Not in money, Atticus said, but before the year’s out, I’ll have been paid. You watch.’
We watched. One morning Jem and I found a load of stovewood in the backyard. Later, a sack of hickory nuts appeared on the back steps. With
Christmas came a crate of smilax and holly. That spring when we found a croker-sack full of turnip greens, Atticus said that Mr Cunningham had more
than paid him. (p23)
Because-he-is-trash. (Walter Cunningham) (p248)

Dolphus Raymond (p221)


Being a Finch

“It was customary for the men in the family to remain on te Simon’s homestead, Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton. The place was
self-sufficent: modest in comparison to the empires that surrounded it, the Landing nevertheless produced everything required to sustain life except
ice, wheat flour, and articles of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile.” (p4)

“..yet the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery
to read Law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a
taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.” (p4)

Aunt Alexandra fitted into town of Maycomb like a hand into a glove. (p145)

Your aunt has asked me to try and impress upon you and Jean Louise that you are not from run-of-the-mill people, that you are the product of several
generations’ gentle breeding...and that you should try to live up to your name. She asked me to tell you that you must try to behave like the little lady
and gentleman that you are.” (p147)

Atticus Finch was the deadest shot in Maycomb County in his time. (P108) “Ol’ One-Shot.”