Miss. Caroline
Page 19.
“Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying. ‘Let’s not let our imaginations run
away with us, dear,’ she said. ‘Now you tell your father not to teach you any more.
It’s best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I’ll take over from here and
try to undo the damage –‘”
Page 20.
“’Miss Caroline caught me writing and told my father to stop teaching me. ‘Besides’
she said, ‘We don’t write in the first grade, we print. You won’t learn to write until
you’re in the third grade.”
You might also want to read page 35.
Miss. Maudie
47-51.
page 50
“Thing is, foot-washers think women are a sin by definition. They take the Bible
literally, you know.”
“Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. ‘You are too young to
understand it,’ she said, ‘but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse
than a whisky bottle in the hand of- oh, of your father…’ ….
‘What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he wouldn’t be as hard
as some men are at their best. 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 could
look down the street and see the result.”
Page 99
“Your father’s right,’ she said. ‘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.”
Jem
Page 79
‘… but Atticus, I swear to God he ain’t never harmed us, he ain’t ever hurt us, he
coulda hurt my throat from ear to ear that night but he tried to mend my pants
instead… he ain’t ever hurt us, Atticus –‘
Atticus said, ‘Whoa, son,’ so gently that I was greatly heartened. It was obvious he
had not followed a word Jem said, for all Atticus said was ‘You’re right. We’d better
keep this and the blanket to ourselves. Some day, maybe, Scout can thank him for
covering her up.’
‘Thank who?’ I asked.
‘Boo Radley. You were so busy looking at the fire you didn’t know it when he put the
blanket around you.’
Jem and Atticus
Page 124
“…’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.”
Cecil Jacobs
Read pages 82-83 with the exchange between Scout and Cecil Jacobs, then read this
quote:
“Atticus sighed. ‘I’m simply defending a Negro- his name’s Tom Robinson… Scout,
you aren’t old enough to understand some things yet, but tehre’s been some high talk
around town to the effect that I shouldn’t do much about defending this man…’
‘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
my head up in town, I couldn’t represent this country in the legislature, I couldn’t
even tell you or Jem not to do something again.”
Francis Hancock
Page 91
“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.”
Page 95
Scout says: ‘When Jem and I fusss, Atticus doesn’t ever just listen to Jem’s side of it,
he hears mine too, an’ in the second place you told me never to use words like that
except in ex-extreme provocation, and Francis provoked me enough to knock his
block of-‘
Uncle Jack Finch
Page 96
Atticus said, ‘You’ve got a lot to learn, Jack.’
‘I know. Your daughter gave me my first lessons this afternoon. She said I didn’t
understand children much and told me why. She was quite right. Atticus, she told me
how I should have treated her- oh dear, I’m sorry I romped on her.’
Page 97
‘Scout’s got to learn to keep her head and learn soon, with what’s in store for her
these next few months. She’s coming along, though. Jem’s getting older and she
follows his example a good bit now. All she needs is assistance sometimes.”
Atticus
Page 33
“Bit by bit I told him the day’s misfortunies. ‘-And she said you taught me all wrong,
so we can’t ever read any more, ever. Please don’t send me back, please sir.’
‘First of all,’ he said, ‘if you can 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… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’
Page 98
‘You know what’s going to happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and pray I can get
Jem and Scout through it without bitterness, and most of all, without catching
Maycomb’s unusual disease. 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 Scout and Jem come to me for their answers instead of listening to the
town. I hope they trust me enough…’
Atticus 2
page 99
“When he gave us our air rifles Atticus wouldn’t teach us to shoot. Uncle Jack
instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn’t interested in guns.
Atticus said to Jem one day, ‘I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I
know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but
remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
Page 120
“’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.’”
Page 116
‘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.’
‘Atticus, you must be wrong.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Well, most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong…’
‘They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their
opinions,’ said Atticus, ‘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.”
Mrs. Henry Dubose
Page 112
“Don’t you contradict me!’ Mrs. Dubose brawled. ‘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…”
“But Mrs. Dubose held us: ‘Not only a Finch waiting on tables but one in the courthouse lawing for niggers’
Jem stiffened. Mrs. Dubose’s shot had gone home and she knew it.
‘Yes indeed, what has this world come to when a Finch goes against his raising? I’ll
tell you!’ She put her hand to her mouth. When she drew it way, it trailed a long silver
thread of saliva. ‘Your father’s no better than the niggers he works for.”
Calpurnia
Page 27
‘He ain’t company, Cal, he’s just a Cunningham-‘
‘Hush your mouth. Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets food 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!’