Best Quotes from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee with Page Numbers

So Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford, a neighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing.

It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon’s homestead, Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton.

Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.

He was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him.

It was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

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.

Calpurnia was something else again.

When he said that, I knew he was afraid.

I can read.

You’re scared.” murmured Dill patiently.

"I never looked forward more to anything in my life."

"I longed to join them."

"You mean we can’t play any more?"

"It’s best to begin reading with a fresh mind."

"I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving finger separated into words... reading was something that just came to me."

"One does not love breathing."

"The Cunninghams never took anything they can’t pay back."

"They get along on what they have. They don’t have much, but they get along on it."

"You watch."

"Mr. Cunningham had more than paid him."

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.

I’ll be dogged. I didn’t know no better than not to read to her, and she held me responsible.

Anybody sets foot 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!

You think about how much Cal does for you, and you mind her, you hear?

Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.

There are ways of keeping them in school by force, but it’s silly to force people like the Ewells into a new environment.

We couldn’t operate a single day without Cal, have you ever thought of that?

You must obey the law.

If you’ll concede the necessity of going to school, we’ll go on reading every night just as we always have.

An agreement reached by mutual concessions.

“I could only look around me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything—at least, what one didn’t know the other did.”

“For some reason, my first year of school had wrought a great change in our relationship: Calpurnia’s tyranny, unfairness, and meddling in my business had faded to gentle grumblings of general disapproval.”},{

“Why can’t you just pull it up?”

“Yes ma’am. They’d burn right with me.”

“You are too young to understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle.”

“Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.”

“This—is—different,” said Jem.

“What Mr. Radley did was his own business.”

“If he wanted to come out, he would.”

“We were, in effect, doing the same thing to Mr. Radley.”

“The civil way to communicate with another being was by the front door instead of a side window.”

“You want to be a lawyer, don’t you?” Atticus said.

"I wanta keep it that way."

"Atticus ain’t ever whipped me since I can remember."

"Shut up!"

"You don’t have to come along, Angel May."

"We better go down there," said Jem. "They’ll think it’s funny if we don’t show up."

"Don’t get in a row of collards whatever you do, they’ll wake the dead."

"It was then, I suppose, that Jem and I first began to part company."

"You mean he’s never caught you at anything."

"You can’t. I won’t let you."

"Sometimes I did not understand him, but my periods of bewilderment were short-lived."

Can’t anybody tell what you’re gonna do lest they live in the house with you, and even I can’t tell sometimes.

These are us.

It’s almost like—somebody knew you were comin’ back for ’em.

Like somebody was readin’ my mind . . . like somebody could tell what I was gonna do.

I’d rather have this one instead. Maybe I can fix it.

Dear sir, we appreciate everything which you have put into the tree for us.

I don’t get it, I just don’t get it—I don’t know why, Scout . . .

It must be some little kid’s place—hides his things from the bigger folks.

Mr. Radley turned around.

That tree’s as healthy as you are, Jem.

"You can’t go around making caricatures of the neighbors."

"Looks messy now, but it won’t later."

"If it freezes tonight these plants’ll freeze, so you cover ’em up. Is that clear?"

"There are ways of doing things you don’t know about."

"Always wanted a smaller house, Jem Finch. Gives me more yard."

"I’ll build me a little house and take me a couple of roomers . . . I’ll have the finest yard in Alabama."

"With most of her possessions gone and her beloved yard a shambles, she still took a lively and cordial interest in Jem’s and my affairs."

"Why, I hated that old cow barn. Thought of settin’ fire to it a hundred times myself."

"Just think, Scout, if you’d just turned around, you’da seen him."

"Looks like all of Maycomb was out tonight, in one way or another."

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

This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they’re still our friends and this is still our home.

If I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.

Try fighting with your head for a change... it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning.

You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let ’em get your goat.

I could take being called a coward for him.

Atticus, how bad is this going to be? You haven’t had too much chance to discuss it.

What bothers me is that she and Jem will have to absorb some ugly things pretty soon.

I hope and pray I can get Jem and Scout through it without bitterness, and most of all, without catching Maycomb’s usual disease.

I just hope that Jem and Scout come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town.

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy.

You’d be surprised, there’s life in him yet.

Maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things.

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

You’d be surprised what your father can do.

Atticus is real old, but I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t do anything.

Atticus is a gentleman, just like me!

Don’t you ever let me catch you pointing that gun at anybody again.

It seemed with all that you’d be proud of him. Can’t everybody play a Jew’s Harp.

I learned that we should be graceful with our moving, and I learned that oftentimes people in the world had their own reasons for doing things that they should not be ashamed.

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

You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.

Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

Sometimes the law makes mistakes. That doesn't mean we aren't going to hold to the highest standard.

It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.

It’s not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things.

There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ’em all away from you. But the world’s not a fair place.

This case is as simple as black and white.

You think about it, and I think that man’s gonna stay for a long time.

"It’s the same God, ain’t it?"

"You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves..."

"I just can’t help it if Mister Jem’s growin’ up..."

"I will read some announcements."

"This church has no better friend than your daddy."

"Nobody leaves here till we have ten dollars."

"You must be patient with him and disturb him as little as possible."

"They parted and made a small pathway to the church door for us."

"It’s like we were goin’ to Mardi Gras..."

"All those folks? That’s right... Can’t but about four folks in First Purchase read..."

"I could think of nothing else to say to her. In fact I could never think of anything to say to her."

"I had an idea, however, that Aunt Alexandra’s appearance on the scene was not so much Atticus’s doing as hers."

"She was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it was."

"Your aunt has asked me to try and impress upon you and Jean Louise that you are not from run-of-the-mill people..."

"She wants to talk to you about the family and what it’s meant to Maycomb County through the years..."

"This was not my father. My father never thought these thoughts. My father never spoke so."

"Don’t you worry about anything," he said. "It’s not time to worry."

"I don’t want you to remember it. Forget it."

"Aunty better watch how she talks—scratch most folks in Maycomb and they’re kin to us."

"It takes a woman to do that kind of work."

You may think otherwise, but I couldn’t have got along without her all these years.

She’s a faithful member of this family and you’ll simply have to accept things the way they are.

If anything, she’s been harder on them in some ways than a mother would have been.

Cal’s lights are pretty good—and another thing, the children love her.

Atticus smiled. "Let’s leave it at this: you mind Jem whenever he can make you. Fair enough?"

Atticus’s voice had its usual pleasant dryness."Scout, we can do better than a pan of cold corn bread, can’t we?"

Nobody’s about to make you go anywhere but to bed pretty soon.

You don’t want ’em around you all the time, Dill—good night.

Dill, you ain’t telling me right—your folks couldn’t do without you.

Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to.

"You’re not scared of that crowd, are you?"

"Link, that boy might go to the chair, but he’s not going till the truth’s told."

"I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady."

"They’ve gone, Get some sleep, Tom. They won’t bother you any more."

"Thought about it, but didn’t believe it. Well then, that changes things, doesn’t it?"

"There was a murmur of glee that died suddenly."

"It was a summer’s night, but the men were dressed, most of them, in overalls and denim shirts buttoned up to the collars."

"He was our friend. Just your friendly neighborhood man."

"Atticus subjected every crisis of his life to tranquil evaluation."

"Do you really think you want to move there, Scout?"

"Mr. Cunningham’s basically a good man, he just has his blind spots along with the rest of us."

"That proves something—that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human."

"You will not touch him. I don’t want either of you bearing a grudge about this thing, no matter what happens."

"Anything fit to say at the table’s fit to say in front of Calpurnia. She knows what she means to this family."

"It’s a funny thing about Braxton, he despises Negroes, won’t have one near him."

"Son, you’ll understand folks a little better when you’re older."

"A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance!"

"I don’t know of any law that says they can’t talk. Maybe if we didn’t give them so much to talk about they’d be quiet."

"You can’t sometimes, not unless you know who they are. But he’s half Raymond, all right."

"I’m quite aware of that. Just because it’s public, I don’t have to go, do I?"

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

This the first time you’ve ever been in court? I don’t recall ever seeing you here.

There has been a request that this courtroom be cleared of spectators... but I can assure you of one thing: you will receive what you see and hear in silence or you will leave this courtroom.

You’re left-handed, Mr. Ewell.

Didn’t you think she should have had a doctor, immediately?

I never thought of it, I had never called a doctor to any of mine in my life.

All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white.

I can use one hand good as the other.

Atticus Finch was taking advantage of him.

We’ve got him.

You’ve nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to fear.

I said it all happened so fast.

Don’t be ’fraid of anybody here, as long as you tell the truth.

You’re becoming suddenly clear on this point.

I want you to say something that did happen.

I got somethin’ to say an’ then I ain’t gonna say no more.

Your fancy airs don’t come to nothin’.

You can do that, can’t you?

He’s not trying to mock you, he’s trying to be polite.

You’re all yellow stinkin’ cowards, stinkin’ cowards, the lot of you.

I reckon I’ll hafta give you a nickel, won’t I? I said, ‘No ma’am, there ain’t no charge.’

It occurred to me that in their own way, Tom Robinson’s manners were as good as Atticus’s.

Mr. Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you’d be scared, too.

I didn’t want to be ugly, I didn’t want to push her or nothin’.

I don’t say she’s lyin’, Mr. Gilmer, I say she’s mistaken in her mind.

I was just tryin’ to help her out, suh.

That’s just Mr. Gilmer’s way, Dill, he does ’em all that way.

He’s the same in the courtroom as he is on the public streets.

It was just him I couldn’t stand.

It just makes me sick.

"Some folks don’t—like the way I live. Now I could say the hell with ’em, I don’t care if they don’t like it. I do say I don’t care if they don’t like it, right enough—but I don’t say the hell with ’em, see?"

"I try to give ’em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason."

"Secretly, Miss Finch, I’m not much of a drinker, but you see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that’s the way I want to live."

"Cry about the simple hell people give other people—without even thinking."

"Atticus says cheatin’ a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin’ a white man. Says it’s the worst thing you can do."

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

"You don’t know your pa’s not a run-of-the-mill man, it’ll take a few years for that to sink in—you haven’t seen enough of the world yet."

"The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place."

"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal... That institution, gentlemen, is a court."

"A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up."

"This court will come to order."

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

"They’re right up yonder in the Colored balcony—been there since precisely one-eighteen P.M."

"The jury might be out and back in a minute, we don’t know—"

"Calpurnia marched us home: '—skin every one of you alive, the very idea, you children listenin’ to all that!"

"You oughta be perfectly ashamed of yourself—ain’t you got any sense at all?"

"Reverend Sykes had saved our places."

"Ain’t it a long time?" I asked him. "Sure is, Scout," he said happily.

"If enough people—a stadium full, maybe—were to concentrate on one thing... the tree would ignite of its own accord."

"I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: 'Guilty . . . guilty . . . guilty . . . guilty . . ."

“It ain’t right, Atticus,” said Jem. “No son, it’s not right.”

“Things are never as bad as they seem.”

“I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.”

“We’re the safest folks in the world,” said Miss Maudie. “We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us.”

“It was no accident. I was sittin’ there on the porch last night, waiting...and I thought to myself, well, we’re making a step—it’s just a baby-step, but it’s a step.”

“Good night.”

“This is their home, sister,” said Atticus. “We’ve made it this way for them, they might as well learn to cope with it.”

“Don’t you oh well me, sir,” Miss Maudie replied...“you are not old enough to appreciate what I said.”

“You’d be surprised how many of us do.”

“Every one of ’em oughta be ridin’ broomsticks.”

You understand?

Too proud to fight, you nigger-lovin’ bastard?

He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there.

There's always the possibility, no matter how improbable, that he’s innocent.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow.

There’s nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who’ll take advantage of a Negro’s ignorance.

You could’ve given him twenty years.

They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.

If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man.

I hope it’s not in you children’s time.

It’s that simple.

The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us.

You’re mighty dressed up, Miss Jean Louise.

You be still as a mouse in that corner.

When I go home I’m going to give a course on the Mrunas and bring J. Grimes Everett’s message to Maycomb.

You are a fortunate girl. You live in a Christian home with Christian folks in a Christian town.

Stop that shaking.

It tears him to pieces. He doesn’t show it much, but it tears him to pieces.

When they quit talking about Tom Robinson’s wife, I had contented myself with thinking of Finch’s Landing and the river.

It’s never entered that wool of hers that the only reason I keep her is because this depression’s on and she needs her dollar and a quarter every week she can get it.

‘Because they don’t bother you,’ Jem answered in the darkness.

‘You’d better catch a ride back. I won’t be going home for a while.’

‘Just fell down in the dirt, like a giant with a big foot just came along and stepped on her.’

‘Scout,’ said Dill, ‘she just fell down in the dirt.’

‘It was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping.’

‘Senseless killing—Tom had been given due process of law to the day of his death.’

‘Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but... in the secret courts of men’s hearts Atticus had no case.’

‘Maycomb thought he was trying to write an editorial poetical enough to be reprinted in The Montgomery Advertiser.’

‘The name Ewell gave me a queasy feeling.’

‘Mr. Ewell was more hot gas than anything.’

When it happened, he’d just be sitting in the swing when I came along.

You might get shot. You know Mr. Nathan shoots at every shadow he sees.

Things had a way of settling down, and after enough time passed people would forget.

‘Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.’

That’s the difference between America and Germany. We are a democracy and Germany is a dictatorship.

Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced.

It is not okay to hate anybody.

How can you hate Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home?

I never wanta hear about that courthouse again.

Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while.

Mr. Link Deas made a job for Helen. He didn’t really need her, but he said he felt right bad about the way things turned out.

‘You don’t have to touch her, all you have to do is make her afraid...’

I think I understand... He thought he’d be a hero, but all he got for his pain was... was, okay, we’ll convict this Negro but get back to your dump.

Atticus told Miss Ruth not to fret... if Bob Ewell wanted to discuss Atticus’s ‘getting’ his job, he knew the way to the office.

It might be because he knows in his heart that very few people in Maycomb really believed his and Mayella’s yarns.

By the end of October, our lives had become the familiar routine of school, play, study.

‘I don’t like it, Atticus, I don’t like it at all,’ was Aunt Alexandra’s assessment of these events.

Nobody chunked at her, but when she was a few yards beyond the Ewell house, she looked around and saw Mr. Ewell walking behind her.

‘I ain’t touched her, Link Deas, and ain’t about to go with no nigger!’

‘You tell Cecil I’m about as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin.’

"Ain't you scared of Boo Radley?"

"You know Atticus wouldn't let you go to the schoolhouse by yourself."

"Don't see why, it's just around the corner and across the yard."

"That yard's a mighty long place for little girls to cross at night."

"You can put yours back of the stage by mine, Scout, and we can go with the rest of 'em."

"Cut it out, now."

"From the mud to the stars."

"They said later that Mrs. Merriweather was putting her all into the grand finale."

"You all right in there, Scout?"

"No—no, darling, he’s unconscious. We won’t know how badly he’s hurt until Dr. Reynolds gets here."

He’s dead all right. He’s good and dead. He won’t hurt these children again.

If we followed our feelings all the time we’d be like cats chasin’ their tails.

This thing probably saved her life.

Bob Ewell meant business.

There’s just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to ’em.

Even then, they ain’t worth the bullet it takes to shoot ’em.

I can’t conceive of a man who’d—

Mr. Finch, there are some kinds of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to ’em.

I thought it was Jem at first, but it didn’t sound like him.

Hey, Boo.

"Nobody’s hushing this up. I don’t live that way."

"If I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye, and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him."

"Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him."

"If they don’t trust me they won’t trust anybody."

"It’s a sin and I’m not about to have it on my head."

"Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent, but I’m all they’ve got."

"Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr. Finch."

"I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I’m still sheriff of Maycomb County."

"Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?"

"Thank you for my children, Arthur."

You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.

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

He was real nice...