To Kill a Mockingbird

"They're not actually interested in whether Boo's innocent or not—they just want to see him come out of his house."

"I wanted to know why those people were here in the first place."

"Do the best you can with what you have."

"That's the way it is with some folks. They don't have much sense."

"I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's shut himself up in the house all this time."

"You're going to have a number of new experiences."

"Jem, I'm not going to have you beholden to anybody."

"He's nothing but trash. That's all there is to it."

"Scout, you're going to be fine. More than fine."

"Whatever starts in a man's imagination, must end in a man's hands."

"Atticus was right. One time he said you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view."

"Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some folks that we lived as we did, but of pride to others."

"We're making a night of it."

"The time you waste looking at monuments while you're on Earth is time lost."

"To love is to forgive."

"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."

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

"Maybe he didn't have time. Maybe he was tired."

"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Edison, and the ignorant man the equal of any president."

"You can't really own land until you know how long the river has been there."

"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."

"I'm going to win this case. I'm going to win it as surely as if we were in an open courtroom."

"The simple hell of it is, we're licked before we start."

"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 just sing their hearts out for us."

"This case, Tom Robinson's case, is something that goes to the essence of a man's conscience."

"People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for."

"I hope it pleases you that I intend to join the common run of men and women."

"There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn't be fair if they tried."

"As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but 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, that white man is trash."

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."