To Kill A Mockingbird Quote

To Kill A Mockingbird Quotes
Directions: Know who said the quote, who is being spoken to, the significance of the quote to the novel or characterization.
1. “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” (Chapter 1, pg. 3).
2. “He [Atticus] liked Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him, and because of Simon Finch’s industry, Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every family in the town” (Chapter 1, pg. 5).
3. “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day’ bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting of sweat and sweet talcum. People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County” (Chapter 1, pg. 5).
4. “Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel, and would be spending every summer in Maycomb from now on. His family was from Maycomb Country originally, his mother worked for a photographer in Meridian” (Chapter 1, 7).
5. “The mystery of the house began many years before Jem and I were born. The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church, Maycomb’s principal recreation, but worshiped at home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a missionary circle. Mr. Radley walked to town at eleven-thirty every morning and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that the neighborhood assumed contained the family groceries. I never knew how old Mr. Radley made his living—Jem said he ‘bought cotton,’ a polite term for doing nothing—but Mr. Radley and his wife had lived there with their two sons as long as anybody could remember. The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays, another thing alien to Maycomb’s ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather only. Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes. But to climb the Radley front steps and call, ‘He-y,’ of a Sunday afternoon was something their neighbors never did. The Radley house had no screen doors. I once asked Atticus if it ever had any; Atticus said yes, but before I was born” (Chapter 1, 9).
6. “The judge decided to send the boys [Radley’s] to the state industrial school, where boys were sometimes sent for no other reason than to provide them with food and decent shelter: it was no prison and it was no disgrace. Mr. Radley thought it was. If the judge released Arthur, Mr. Radley would see to it that Arthur gave no further trouble. Knowing that Mr. Radley’s word was his bond, judge was glad to do so” (Chapter 1, 10).
7. “According to Miss Stephanie, Boo was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from The Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities. Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all, but when the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the livingroom, cutting up the Tribune. He was thirty-three years old then” (Chapter 1, 11).
8. “Atticus shook his head at me again. ‘But he’s gone and drowned his dinner in syrup,’ I protested. ‘He’s poured it all over—’ It was then that Calpurnis requested my presence in the kitchen. She was furious, and when she was furious Calpurnia’s grammar became erratic. When in tranquility, her grammar was as good as anybody’s in Maycomb. Atticus said Calpurnia had more education than most colored folks. When she squinted down at me the tiny lines around her eyes deepened. ‘There’s some folks who don’t eat like us,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘but you ain’t called on to contradict ’em at the table when they don’t. That boy’s yo’ comp’ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?” (Calpurnia, Chapter 3, 24).
9. “‘First of all,’ he said, ‘if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot 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’” (Atticus, Chapter 3, 30).
10. “Atticus’s arrival was the second reason I wanted to quit the game. The first reason happened the day I rolled into the Radley front yard. Through all the head-shaking, quelling of nausea and Jem-Yelling, I had heard another sound, so low I could not have heard it from the sidewalk. Someone inside the house was laughing” (Chapter 4, 41).
11. “Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was that we could play on her lawn, eat her scuppernongs if we didn’t jump on the arbor, and explore her vast back lot, terms so generous we seldom spoke to her, so careful were we to preserve the delicate balance of our relationship, but Jem and Dill drove me closer to her with their behavior. Miss Maudie hated her house: time spent indoors was time wasted. She was a widow, a chameleon lady who worked in her flower beds in an old straw hat and men’s coveralls, but after her five o’clock bath she would appear on the porch and reign over the street in magisterial beauty. She loved everything that grew in God’s earth, even the weeds. With one exception. If she found a blade of nut grass in her yard it was like the Second Battle of the Marne…” (Chapter 5, 42).
12. “Miss Maudie had known Uncle Jack Finch, Atticus’s brother, sine they were children. Nearly the same age, they had grown up together at Finch’s Landing. Miss Maudie was the daughter of a neighboring landowner. Dr. Frank Buford. Dr. Buford’s profession was medicine and his obsession was anything that grew in the ground, so he stayed poor. Uncle Jack Finch confined his passion for digging to his window boxes in Nashville and stayed rich. We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him” (Chapter 5, 43).
13. “‘You reckon he’s [Boo] crazy?’ Miss Maudie shook her head. ‘If he’s not he should be by now. The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets—’” (Chapter 5, 46).
14. “‘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 up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again…Because I could never ask you to mind me again. Scout, simply by the nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one’s mine, I guess. You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will: 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. Try fighting with your head for a change…it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning’” (Atticus and Scout, Chapter 9, 75-6).
15. “Aunt Alexandra was Atticus’s sister, but when Jem told me about changelings and siblings, I decided that she had been swapped at birth, that my grandparents had perhaps received a Crawford instead of a Finch. Had I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains that seem to obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there” (Chapter 9, 77).
16. “Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn’t to be doing things that required pants. Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in my father’s lonely life. I suggested that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that one had to behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. She hurt my feelings and set my teeth permanently on edge, but when I asked Atticus about it, he said there were already enough sunbeams in the family and to go on about my business, he didn’t mind me much the way I was” (Chapter 9, 81).
17. “‘Right. But do you think I could face my children otherwise? 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 usual 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 Jem and Scout come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town. I hope they trust me enough…’ But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said” (Atticus and Scout, Chapter 9, 88-9).
18. “‘I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, 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.’ That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. ‘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’” (Atticus, Scout, and Miss Maudie, Chapter 10, 90).
19. “‘Naw, Scout, it’s something you wouldn’t understand. Atticus is real old, but I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t do anything---I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t do a blessed thing.’ Jem picked up a rock and threw it jubilantly at the carhouse. Running after it, he called back: ‘Atticus is a gentleman, just like me!’” (Jem and Scout, Chapter 10, 99).
20. “‘Good evening Mrs. Dubose! You look like a picture this evening.’ I never heard Atticus say like a picture of what. He would tell her the courthouse news, and would say he hoped with all his heart she’d have a good day tomorrow. He would return his hat to his head, swing me to his shoulders in her very presence, and we would go home in the twilight. It was at 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 and Scout, Chapter 11, 100).
21. “‘Yes indeed, what has this world come to when a Finch goes against his raising? I’ll tell you…Your father’s no better than the nigger and trash he works for!’” (Mrs. Dubose, Chapter 11, 102).
22. “ In later years, I sometimes wondered exactly what made Jem do it, what made him break the bonds of ‘You just be a gentleman, son,’ and the phase of self-conscious rectitude he had recently entered. Jem had probably stood as much guff about Atticus lawing for niggers as had I, and I took it for granted that he kept his temper—he had a naturally tranquil disposition and a slow fuse. At the time, however, I thought the only explanation for what he did was that for a few minutes he simply went mad…He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves” (Chapter 11, 102-3).
23. “‘She was [a lady]. She had her own views about things, a lot different from mine, maybe…son, I told you that if you hadn’t lost your head I’d have made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her—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. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew’” (Atticus, Chapter 11, 112).
24. “ ‘They my comp’ny,’ said Calpurnia. Again I thought her voice strange: she was talking like the rest of them…Lula stopped, but she said, ‘You ain’t got no business bringin’ white chillun here—they got their church, we got our’n’” (Cal, Scout, Lula, Chapter 12, 119).
25. “That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me. The idea that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel one, to say nothing of her having command of two languages… ‘Cal, can I come see you sometimes…Out to your house” (Scout, Chapter 12, 125).
26. “She never let a chance escape her to point out the short-comings of other tribal groups to the greater glory of our own…Everybody in Maycomb, it seemed, had a Streak: a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Steak” (Chapter 13, 129).
27. “I never understood her preoccupation with heredity. Somewhere, I had received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could with the sense they had, but Aunt Alexandra was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it was” (Chapter 13, 130).
28. “There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitudes, character shadings, even gestures, as having been repeated in each generation and refined by time. This the dicta No Crawford Minds His Own Business, Every Third Merriweather Is Morbid, The Truth Is Not in the Delafields, All the Bufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living: never take a check from a Delafield without a discreet call to the bank; Miss Maudie Atkinson’s shoulder stoops because she was a Buford; if Mrs. Grace Merriweather sips gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles it’s nothing unusual—her mother did the same” (Chapter 13, 131).
29. “‘Let’s get this clear: you do as Calpurnia tell you, you do as I tell you, and as long as your aunt’s in this house, you will do as she tells you...’ I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in my life I thought of running away. Immediately.” (Atticus and Scout, Chapter 14, 136).
30. “Then he [Jem] rose and broke the remaining code of our childhood” (Chapter 14, 141).
31. “There was a smell of stale whiskey and pigpen about, and when I glanced around I discovered that these men were strangers. They were not the people I saw last night. Hot embarrassment shot through me: I had leaped into a ring of people I had never seen before…Jem shook his head. As Atticus’s fists went to his hips, so did Jem’s, and as they faced each other I could see little resemblance between them: Jem’s soft brown hair and eyes, his oval face and snug-fitting ears were our mother’s, contrasting oddly with Atticus’s graying black hair and square-cut features, but they were somehow alike. Mutual defiance made them alike” (Chapter 15, 152).
32. “‘Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How’s your entailment getting’ along?...Don’t you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?...I go to school with Walter…He’s your boy, ain’t he, sir?’” (Scout, Chapter 15, 153).
33. “‘He might have hurt me alittle…but son, you’ll understand folks a little better when you’re older. A mob’s always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern down is always made up of people you know—doesn’t say much for them, does it?...So it took an eight-year-old child to bring ’em to their senses, didn’t it?...That proves something—that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children…you children last night made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a minute. That was enough.’” (Atticus, Chapter 16, 157).
34. “‘The right side, Mr. Finch, but she had more bruises…her arms were bruised, and she showed me her neck. There were definite finger marks on her gullet’” (Mr. Tate, Chapter 17, 169).
35. “Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin. The cabin’s plank walls were supplemented with sheets of corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat, so only its roof suggested its original design: square, with four tiny rooms opening onto a shotgun hall, the cabin rested uneasily upon four irregular lumps of limestone. Its windows were merely open spaces in the walls, which in the summertime were covered with greasy strips of cheesecloth to keep out the varmints that feasted on Maycomb’s refuse. The varmints had a lean time of it, for the Ewells gave the dump a thorough gleaning every day, and the fruits of their industry (those that were not eaten) made the plot of ground around the cabin look like the playhouse of an insane child: what passed for a fence was bits of tree-limbs, broomsticks and tool shafts, all tipped with rusty hammer-heads, snaggle-toothed rake heads, shovels, axes and grubbing hoes, held on with pieces of barbed wire. Enclosed by this barricade was a dirty yard containing the remains of a Model-T Ford (on blocks), a discarded dentist’s chair, an ancient icebox, plus lesser items: old shoes, worn-out table radios, picture frames, and fruit jars, under which scrawny orange chickens pecked hopefully. One corner of the yard, though, bewildered Maycomb. Against the fence, in a line, were six chipped-enamel slop jars holding brilliant red geraniums, cared for as tenderly as if they belonged to Miss Maudie Atkinson, had Miss Maudie deigned to permit a geranium on her premises. People said they were Mayella Ewell’s” (Chapter 17, 170-1).
36. “ ‘It was just him I couldn’t stand…That old Mr. Gilmer doin’ him thataway, talking so hateful to him…It was just the way he said it made me sick, plain sick…Well, Mr. Finch didn’t act that way to Mayella and old man Ewell when he cross-examined them. The way that man called him ‘boy’ all the time an’ sneered at him, an’ looked around at the jury every time he answered—’ ‘Well, Dill, after all he’s just a Negro.’ ‘I don’t care one speck. It ain’t right, somehow it ain’t right to do ’em that way. Hasn’t anybody got any business talkin’ like that—it just makes me sick.’” (Dill and Scout, Chapter 19, 198-9).
37. “As Mr. Dolphus Raymond was an evil man I accepted his invitation reluctantly, but I followed Dill. Somehow, I didn’t think Atticus would like it if we became friendly with Mr. Raymond, and I knew Aunt Alexandra wouldn’t…‘you mean, why do I pretend? Well, it’s very simple…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. When I come to town, which is seldom, if I weave a little and drink out of this sack, folks can say Dolphus Raymond’s in the clutches of whiskey—that’s why he won’t change his ways. He can’t help himself, that’s why he lives the way he does…It ain’t honest but it’s mighty helpful to folks. 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.’ I had a feeling that I shouldn’t be here listening to this sinful man who had mixed children and didn’t care who knew it, but he was fascinating. I had never encouraged a being who deliberately perpetrated fraud against himself. But why had he entrusted us with his deepest secret?...‘Because you’re children and you can understand it…Things haven’t caught up with that one’s instinct yet. Let him get a little older and he won’t get sick and cry. Maybe things’ll strike him as being—not quite right, say, but he won’t cry, not when he gets a few years on him…Cry about the simple hell people give other people—without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people too.’ ‘Atticus says cheatin’ a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin’ a white man…Says it’s the worst thing you can do’” (Dill, Mr. Raymond and Scout, Chapter 18, 200-201).
38. “‘To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. This case is as simple as black and white’” (Atticus, Chapter 18, 203).
39. “‘I don’t know, but they’ll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children weep…’ ‘Tom Robins’s daddy sent you along this chicken this morning. I fixed it…Estelle down at the hotel sent ’em [rolls].’ We followed him. The kitchen table was loaded with enough food to bury the family: hunks of salt pork, tomatoes, beans, even scuppernongs…Calpurnia said, ‘This was all ’round the back steps when I got here this morning. They—they ’preciate what you did, Mr. Finch. They—they aren’t oversteppin’ themselves, are they?’ Atticus’s eyes filled with tears. He did not speak for a moment. ‘Tell them I’m very grateful,’ he said. ‘Tell them—tell them they must never do this again. Times are too hard…’” (Calpurnia and Atticus, Chapter 22, 213).
40. “‘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 that father’s one of them.’ ‘It’s like bein’ a caterpillar in a cocoon, that’s what it is…Like somethin’ asleep wrapped up in a warm place. I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that’s what they seemed like.’ ‘We’re the safest folks in the world…We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us.’ ‘Wish the rest of the county thought that.’ ‘You’d be surprised how many is us do…His colored friends for one thing, and people like us. People like Judge Taylor. People like Mr. Heck Tate. Stop eating and start thinking, Jem. Did it ever strike you that Judge Taylor naming Atticus to defend that boy was no accident? That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons for naming him?’ This was a thought. Court-appointed defenses were usually given to Maxwell Green, Maycomb’s latest addition to the bar, who needed the experience. Maxwell Green should have had Tom Robinson’s case” (Miss Maudie and Jem, Chapter 22, 215).
41. “‘He meant it when he said it…Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there.’” (Atticus, Chapter 23, 218).
42. “‘If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man…So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process. Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s jury, but you saw something come between them and reason. You saw the same thing that night in front of the jail. When that crew went away, they didn’t go as reasonable men, they went because we were there. There’s something in our world that makes me lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life…The older you grow the more of it you’ll see. The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. 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, that white man is trash.’” (Atticus, Chapter 23, 220).
43. “‘Why don’t people like us and Miss Maudie ever sit on juries? You never see anybody from Maycomb on a jury—they all come from out in the woods.’ ‘There are lots of reasons. For one thing, Miss Maudie can’t serve on a jury because she’s a woman—’ ‘You mean women in Alabama can’t—?’ I was indignant. ‘I guess it’s to protect our frail ladies from sordid cases like Tom’s…I doubt if we’d ever get a complete case tried—the ladies’d be interrupting to ask questions’” (Jem, Atticus, and Scout, Chapter 23, 221).
44. “‘That was the one thing that made me think, well, this may be the shadow of a beginning. That jury took a few hours. An inevitable verdict, maybe, but usually it take ’em just a few minutes. This time—you might like to know that there was one fellow who took considerable wearing down—in the beginning he was rarin’ for an outright acquittal…’ Atticus said you just had to know ’em. He said the Cunninghams hadn’t taken anything from or off of anybody since they migrated to the New World. He said the other thing about them was, once you earned their respect they were for you tooth and nail. Atticus said he had a feeling, nothing more than a suspicion, that they left the jail that night with considerable respect for the Finches. Then too, he said, it took a thunderbolt plus another Cunningham to make one of them change his mind. ‘If we’d had two of that crowd, we’d’ve had a hung jury’” (Atticus and Scout, Chapter 23, 222).
45. “‘No, everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowin’. That Walter’s as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin’s wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.’ ‘That’s what I thought, too…when I was your age. If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I’m beginning to understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time…it’s because he wants to stay inside.’” (Scout and Jem, Chapter 23, 227).
46. “There was no doubt about it, I must soon enter this world, where on its surface fragrant ladies rocked slowly, fanned gently, and drank cool water. But I was more at home in my father’s world. People like Mr. Heck Tate did not trap you with innocent questions to make fun of you; even Jem was not highly critical unless you said something stupid. Ladies seemed to live in faint horror of men, seemed unwilling to approve wholeheartedly of them. But I liked them. There was something about them, no matter how much they cussed and drank and gambled and chewed; no matter how undelectable they were, there was something about them that I instinctively liked…they weren’t— ‘Hypocrites, Mrs. Perkins, born hypocrites,’ Mrs. Merriweather was saying” (Scout and Mrs. Merriweather, Chapter 23, 234).
47. “‘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; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro…’ Aunt Alexandra looked across the room at me and smiled. She looked at a tray of cookies on the table and nodded at them. I carefully picked up the tray and watched myself walk to Mrs. Merriweather. With my best company manners, I asked her if she would have some. After all, if Aunty could be a lady at a time like this, so could I” (Miss Maudie and Scout, Chapter 24, 236-7).
48. “ ‘Well, something out of the courthouse that night Miss Gates was—she was goin’ down the steps in front of us, you musta not seen her—she was talking with Miss Stephanie Crawford. I heard her say it’s time somebody taught ’em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves, an’ the next thing they think they can do is marry us. Jem, how can you hate Hilter so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home—’ Jem was suddenly furious. He leaped off the bed, grabbed me by the collar and shook me. ‘I never wanta hear about that courthouse again ever, ever, ever, you hear me? You hear me? Don’t you ever say one word to me about it again, you hear? Now go on!’ Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again” (Scout and Jem, Chapter 26, 247).
49. “I wanted to bob for apples, but Cecil said it wasn’t sanitary. His mother said he might catch something from everybody’s heads having been in the same tub. ‘Ain’t anything around town now to catch,’ I protested. But Cecil said his mother said it was unsanitary to eat after folks. I later asked Aunt Alexandra about this, and she said people who held such views were usually climbers’ (Scout, Chapter 28, 257).
50. “He was still leaning against the wall. He had been leaning against the wall when I came into the room, his arms folded across his chest. As I pointed he brought his arms down and pressed the palms of his hands against the wall. They were white hands, sickly white hands that had never seen the sun, so white they stood out garishly against the dull cream wall in the dim light of Jem’s room. I look from his hands to his sand-stained khaki pants; my eyes traveled up his thin frame to his torn denim shirt. His face was as white as his hands, but for a shadow on his jutting chin. His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallows, almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his gray eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind. His hair was dead and thin, almost feathery on top of his head. When I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly, leaving greasy sweat streaks on the wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his belt. A strange small spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails scrape slate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor’s image blurred with my sudden tears. ‘Hey, Boo,’ I said…I wondered why Atticus was inviting us to the front porch instead of the livingroom, then I understood. The livingroom lights were awfully strong.” (Chapters 29-30, Scout, 270-71).
51. “‘I’m not a very good man, sir, but I am sheriff of Maycomb County. Lived in this town all my life ’an I’m goin’ on forty-three years old. Know everything that’s happened here since before I was born. There’s a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it’s dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr. Finch. Let the dead bury the dead…I never heard tell that it’s against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe you’ll say it’s my duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up. Know what’d happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin’ my wife’d be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin’, Mr. Finch, taking the one man who’s done you and this town a great service an’ draggin’ him with his shy ways into the limelight—to me, that’s a sin. It’s a sin and I’m not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man it’d be different. But not this man, Mr. Finch…I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I’m still sheriff of Maycomb County and Bob Ewell fell on his knife.’ ‘Scout, Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?’ ‘Yes sir, I understand…Mr. Tate was right…Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?’’ (Mr. Tate, Atticus, Scout, Chapter 30, 276).
52. “When Boo Radley shuffled to his feet, light from the livingroom windows glistened on his forehead. Every move he made was uncertain, as if he were not sure his hands and feet could make proper contact with the things he touched. He coughed his dreadful raling cough, and was so shaken he had to sit down again. His hand searched for his hip pocket, and he pilled out a handkerchief. He coughed into it, then he wiped his forehead. Having been so accustomed to his absence, I found it incredible that he had been sitting beside me all this time, present. He had not made a sound. Once more, he got to his feet. He turned to me and nodded toward the front door…I led him down the hall…Boo had drifted to a corner of the room, where he stood with his chin up, peering from a distance at Jem. I took him by the hand, a hand surprisingly warm for its whiteness. I tugged him a little, and he allowed me to lead him to Jem’s bed…An expression of timid curiosity was on his face, as though he had never seen a boy before. His mouth was slightly open, and he looked at Jem from head to foot. Boo’s hand came up, but he let it drop to his side. ..I found myself explaining…Boo’s hand hovered over Jem’s head…His hand came down lightly on Jem’s hair. I was beginning to learn his body English. His hand tightened on mine and he indicated that he wanted to leave. I led him to the front porch, where his uneasy steps halted. He was still holding my hand and he gave no sign of letting me go. ‘Will you take me home?’ He almost whispered it, in the voice of a child afraid of the dark…I slipped my hand into the crook of his arm. He had to stoop a little to accommodate me, but if Miss Stephanie Crawford was watching from her upstairs window, she would see Arthur Radley escorting me down the sidewalk, as any gentleman would do…I entered the Radley front gate for the second time in my life. Boo and I walked up the steps to the porch. His fingers found the front doorknob. He gently released my hand, opened the door, went inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again. Neighbors being 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” (Scout and Boo, Chapter 31, 277-8).
53. “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough…As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else left for us to learn, except possibly algebra” (Chapter 31, 279).
54. “ ‘An’ they chased him ’n’ never could catch him ’cause they didn’t know what he looked like, an’ Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things...Atticus, he was real people nice…’ His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. ‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.’ He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.’ (Scout and Atticus, Chapter 31, 281).