To Kill A Mockingbird
Quotes
Jem
“Jem’s definitions are very nearly accurate sometimes.”
“Jem seemed to have little fear of Boo Radley.”
“Jem, educated on a half-Decimal half-Dunce-cap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a
poor example; no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from getting at books.”
“Jem’s head at times was transparent: he had thought that up to make me understand he wasn’t afraid of Radley’s in any
shape or form, to contrast his own fearless heroism with my cowardice.”
“Jem was a born hero”
“Jem was not one to dwell on past defeats”
“Jem was growing.”
“This change in Jem had come about in a matter of weeks.”
“Jem had acquired an alien set of values”
Growing up
“but you have a daughter to think of. A daughter who’s growing up”
Prejudice
“Mr Radley shot a Negro in his collard patch.”
“Every scratch of feet on gravel was Boo Radley seeking revenge, every passing Negro laughing in the night was Boo Radley
loose after us”
“Boo Radley’s insane fingers”
“I tried to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it.”
“Alexandra, Calpurnia’s not leaving this house until she wants to.”
“You aren’t a nigger lover, then, are you?”
“Jem and I hate her.”
“She said you lawed for niggers and trash”
“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.”
“Most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong”
“Tom was a black-velvet Negro, not shiny, but soft black velvet”
“She couldn’t live like Mr Dolphus Raymond, who preferred the company of Negroes, because she didn’t own a river bank
and she wasn’t from a fine old family.”
Boo Radley
“But there came a day, barely within Jem’s memory, when Boo Radley was heard from and was seen by several people, but
not by Jem.”
“Boo wasn’t crazy, he was high-strung at times”
“Boo would die of mould from the damp.”
“Besides, Boo could not live forever on the bounty of the country”
“I played that summer with more than vague anxiety despite Jem’s assurances that Boo Radley was dead and nothing would
get me.”
“Dill’s contribution …. Boo bit it off one night when he couldn’t find any cats and squirrels to eat.”
“do you think Boo Radley’s still alive?”
Arthur Radley just stays in the house, that’s all.”
Scout
“Atticus don’t ever do anything to Jem and me in the house that he don’t do in the yard”
“I saw Atticus carrying Miss Maudie’s heavy oak rocking –chair, and thought it most sensible of him to save what she valued
most.”
“Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.”
“Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he watched his children’s
heart break. Autumn again, and Boo’s children needed him. 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.
Atticus Finch
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … Until you climb inside of his skin
and walk aound in it.”
“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 ..”
“I’m simply defending a Negro … there’s been some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn’t do much about
defending this man.”
“If I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent my county in legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem
not to do something again.”
Miss Maudie Atkinson
“He can do plenty of things … He can make somebody’s will so airtight you can’t break it.”
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy … but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to
kill a mockingbird.”
Sheriff Heck Tate
“Didn’t you know your daddy’s the best shot in this county?”
Other Quotes
“Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red stop;
grass grew on sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a
summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.
Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall
were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”
“It was then, I suppose, that Jem and I first began to part company. Sometimes I did not understand him, but my periods of
bewilderment were short-lived.”
“Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to
understand.”
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions … 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.”
“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.”
“So it took an eight-year-old child to bring ‘em to their senses … That proves something – that a gang of wild animals can be
stopped, simply because they’re still human.”
“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.”
“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”
“The witnesses for the state … have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that
their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption – the
evil assumption – that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted
around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber. Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie
as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, the truth is this: some Negroes
lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men cannot be trusted around women, black or white. But this is a truth that
applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.”
“I don’t know [how they could convict Tom Robinson], 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 ….”