To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird 

by Harper Lee

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” 

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.” 

"Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” 

“With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable."

“That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?” 

“I don't want to hear any words like that while I'm here. Scout, you'll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don't you?'

I said not particularly.” 

“Pass the damn ham, please.” 

“I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year."

“You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't.” 

“Scout, I´m telling 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.” 

“Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.”

“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”

“The way you tell it, it is.” 

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” 

“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 see it through no matter what.

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” 

“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.” 

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... 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.” 

“There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.” 

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.” 

“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, he is trash.”

“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.” 

“Atticus, he was real nice."

"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”