To Kill a Mockingbird

"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try and win."

"Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the sweatstacked night."

"Atticus said our simple hell-yes and hell-no of country people was just another way of talking about truth."

"I'm colorblind. I don't see colors. I see people," Atticus said firmly, though I didn't think he meant it literally."

"The courthouse seemed to hold its breath," I was thinking, as I watched my father walk toward the jury."

"It's not time to worry yet," said Atticus. "We haven't even started yet."

"That's when Jem and I realized that it was now our turn to cry."

"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," I said."Why, think of the joy you could spread."

"Atticus said the jury system was a good thing, but I didn't think so. Now I saw the real thing."

"Scout, I have to tell you something.—I'm going to be on the losing side, but I want to go there without bitterness."

"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived."

"Atticus said that Jem was having a difficult time these days, and that it was all right to be depressed and blue sometimes—you were supposed to have an adjusting period."

"Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

"I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the American judicial system; it's no doubt perfect."

"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."

"Atticus's face was grave. "She's crying," I said softly."

"She made me climb into her skin and walk around in it."

"This case, Tom, is as simple as black and white."

"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—a man with a gun is often the man who is most afraid."

"It's coming back to you now, isn't it? But you weren't expecting it, were you, Mrs. Mayella?"

"I maintained a rigid position on that subject until the facts showed I was wrong."

"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it."

"The things that happen to people we know are there on the Maycomb gazette from one day to the next—why, we even know about half the things in Atlanta."

"I'm simply defending a Negro—his name's Tom Robinson."

"You can't really own a dog. You can only love one."

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

"Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings."

"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 corn cribs; they just sing their hearts out."

"Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and see it through."

"I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks."