To Kill A Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
(Arrow, 2015)
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.
Page 3.
The tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine.
Page 4.
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 court-house sagged in the square.
Page 5.
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 Country.
Page 6.
Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.
Page 6.
Dill was a curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair was snow white and stuck to his head like duck-fluff; he was a year my senior but I towered over him.
Page 8.
We came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.
Page 8.
The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb.
Page 10.
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.
Page 10.
The sheriff hadn’t the heart of put him in jail alongside Negroes, so Boo was locked in the court-house basement.
Page 12.
The more we told Dill about the Radleys, the more he wanted to know, the longer he would stand hugging the light-pole on the corner.
Page 13.
As we stared down the street we thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost invisible movement, and the house was still.
Page 16.
When she was furious Calpurnia’s grammar became erratic. When in tranquillity, her grammar was as good as anybody’s in Maycomb. Atticus said Calpurnia had more education than most coloured folks.
Page 27.
It was our habit to run to meet Atticus the moment we saw him round the post-office corner in the distance.
Page 31.
“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his pint of view.”
Page 33.
I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.
Page 36.
Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree-house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colours in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.
Page 38.
Mrs. Dubose lived two doors up the street form us; neighbourhood opinion was unanimous that Mrs. Dubose was the meanest old woman who ever lived.
Page 39.
Lemonade in the middle of the morning was a summertime ritual.
Page 42.
Jem was a born hero.
Page 44.
Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so.
Page 45.
“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.”
Page 50.
“The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets.”
Page 51.
Dill Harris could tell the biggest ones I ever heard. Among other things, he had been up in a mail plane seventeen times, he had been to Nova Scotia, he had seen an elephant, and his granddaddy was Brigadier General Joe Sheeler and left him his sword.
Page 53.
There was a lady in the moon in Maycomb. She sat at a dresser combing her hair.
Page 56.
“I declare to the Lord you’re getting’ more like a girl every day!”
Page 57.
It was then, I suppose, that Jem and I first began to pert company. Sometimes I did not understand him, but my periods of bewilderment were short-lived. This was beyond me. “Please,” I pleaded, “can’tcha just think about it for a minute - by yourself on that place.”
Page 63.
School started. The second grade was as bad as the first, only worse. … The only thing good about the second grade was that this year I had to stay as late as Jem, and we usually walked home together at three o’clock.
Page 64.
We considered everything we found in the knot-hole our property.
Page 65.
The second grade was grim, but Jem assured me that the older I got the better school would be, that he started off the same way, and it was not until one reached the sixth grade that one learned anything of value.
Page 65.
Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change.
Page 70.
Next morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died of fright. My screams brought Atticus from his bathroom half-shaven.
“The world’s endin’, Atticus! Please do something - !” I dragged him to the window and pointed.
“No it’s not,” he said. “It’s snowing.”
Page 71.
Eula May was Maybcomb’s leading telephone operator. She was entrusted with issuing public announcements, wedding invitations, setting off the fire siren, and giving first-aid instructions when Dr. Reynolds was away.
Page 71.
There are ways of doing things you don’t know about.
Page 81.
Despite our compromise, my campaign to avoid school had continued in one form or another since my first day’s dose of it.
Page 83.
“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”
Page 84.
When stalking one’s prey, it is best to take one’s time. Say nothing, and as sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge.
Page 92.
“Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em.”
Page 97.
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.
Page 98.
Our father didn’t do anything. He worked in an office, not in a drugstore. Atticus did not drive a dump-truck for the county, he was not the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a garage, or do anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone. …
He did not do the things our schoolmates’ father did; he never went hunting, he did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. He sat int eh living-room and read.
Page 99.
“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.”
Page 99.
“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.”
Pages 99-100.
Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street.
Page 105.
“If your father’s anything, he’s civilized in his heart. Marksmanship’s a gift of God, a talent - oh, you have to practice t make it perfect, but shootin’s different from playing the piano or the like. I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things.
Pages 108-109.
“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”
Page 109.
When we were small, Jem and I confined our activities to the southern neighbourhood, but when I was well into the second grade at school and tormenting Boo Radley became passé, the business section of Maycomb drew us frequently up the street past the real property of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. It was impossible to go to town without passing her house unless we wished to walk a mile out of the way. Previous minor encounters with her left me with no desire for more, but Jem said I had to grow up sometime.
Page 110.
There was a hint of summer in the air - in the shadows it was cool but the sun was warm, which meant good times coming: no school and Dill.
Page 113.
Jem antagonized me sometimes until I could kill him, but when it came down to it he was all I had.
Page 115.
When you are in trouble you become easily tired.
Page 115.
“Before I can life 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.”
Page 116.
“It’s never an insult to be called w hat somebody thinks is a bad name. it just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”
Page 120.
Calpurnia would do until Dill came. She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.
Page 127.
A few graves in the cemetery were marked with crumbling tombstones; newer ones were outlined with brightly coloured glass and broken Coca-Cola bottles. Lightening rods guarding some graved denoted dead who rested uneasily, stumps of burned-out candles stood at the heads of infant graves. It was a happy cemetery.
Page 130.
The warm bittersweet smell of Negro welcomed us as we entered the churchyard - Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida, snuff, Hoyt’s Cologne, Brown’s Mule, peppermint, and lilac talcum.
Page 131.
“They’s my comp’ny,” said Calpurnia. Again I thought her voice strange: she was talking like the rest of them.
Page 131.
As I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.
Page 134.
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.
Pages 138-139.
“It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not lady-like … folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em.”
Page 139.
One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.
Page 141.
Aunty had a way of declaring What Is Best For The Family, and I suppose her coming to live with us was in that category.
Page 142.
Aunt Alexandra was one of the last of her kind: she had riverboat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was born in the objective case; she was an incurable gossip. When Aunt Alexandra went to school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning. She was never bored, and given the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.
She never let a chance escape her to point out the shortcomings of other tribal groups to the greater glory of our own, a habit that amused Jem rather than annoyed him.
Page 142.
“Scratch most folks in Maycomb and they’re kind to us.”
Page 142.
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.
Page 143.
Aunt Alexandra fitted into the world of Maycomb like a hand into a glove, but never into the world of Jem and me.
Page 145.
I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work.
Page 148.
As we grew older, Jem and I thought it generous to allow Atticus thirty minutes to himself after supper.
Page 149.
I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me.
Page 150.
Our houses had no cellars; they were built on stone blocks a few feet above the ground and the entry of reptiles was not unknown but was not commonplace.
Page 153.
Dill’s eyes flickered at Jem, and Jem looked at the floor. Then he rose and broke the remaining code of our childhood. He went out of the room and down the hall. ‘Atticus,’ his voice was distance, ‘can you come here a minute, sir?’
Page 155.
Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies.
Page 158.
Jem had outgrown the treehouse, but helped Dill and me construct a new rope ladder for it.
Page 159.
In Maycomb, grown men stood outside in the front yard for only two reasons: death and politics.
Page 159.
I sometimes think Atticus subjected every crisis of his life to tranquil evaluation behind the Mobile Register, the Birmingham News and the Montgomery Advertiser.
Page 161.
Our father had a few peculiarities: one was, he never ate desserts; another was that he liked to walk.
Page 163.
In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one’s mind incapable of definite purpose.
Page 164.
“Jem’s tot the look-arounds,” an affliction Calpurnia said all boys caught at his age.
Page 164.
A long extension cord ran between the bars of a second-floor window and down the side of the building. In the light from its bare bulb, Atticus was sitting propped against the front door. He was sitting in one of his office chairs, and he was reading, oblivious of the nightbugs dancing over his head.
Page 166.
I broke away from Jem and ran as fast as I could to Atticus.
Page 167.
I was beginning to notice a subtle change in my father these days, that came out when he talked with Aunt Alexandra. It was a quiet digging in, never outright irritation. There was a faint starchiness in his voice when he said: ‘Anything fit to say at the table’s fit to say in front of Calpurnia. She knows what she means to this family.’
Pages 172-173.
“So it took an eight-year-old child to being ‘em to their sense, didn’t it?” said Atticus. “That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human.
Page 173.
There was an odd thing about Miss Maudie - on her porch she was too far away for us to see her features clearly, but we could always catch her mood by the way she stood. She was now standing arms akimbo, her shoulders drooping a little, her head cocked to one side, her glasses winking in the sunlight. We knew she wore a grin of the uttermost wickedness.
Page 175.
The jury sat on the left, under long windows. Sunburned, lanky, they seemed to be all farmers, but this was natural: townsfolk rarely sat on juries, they were either struck or excused.
Page 181.
Atticus was proceeding amiably, as if he were involved in a title dispute. With his infinite capacity for calming turbulent seas, he could make a rape case as dry as a sermon.
Page 186.
All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbours was that, if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white.
Page 189.
Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don’t already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food.
Page 195.
In Maycomb County, it was easy to tell when someone bathed regularly, as opposed to yearly lavations: Mr. Ewell had a scalded look; as if an overnight soaking had deprived him of protective layers of dirt, his skin appeared to be sensitive to the elements. Mayella looked as if she tried to keep clean, and I was reminded of the row of red geraniums in the Ewell yard.
Page 197.
Apparently Mayella’s recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father’s brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy trail.
Page 199.
I wondered if anybody had ever called her ‘ma’am’ or ‘Miss Mayella’ in her life; probably not, as she took offence at routine courtesy. What on earth was her life like? I soon found out.
Page 201.
When Atticus asked had she any friends, she seemed not to know what he meant, then she thought he was making fun of her.
Page 211.
He seemed to be a respectable Negro, and a respectable Negro would never go up into somebody’s yard of his own volition.
Page 212.
A steaming summer night was no different f rom a winter morning.
Page 232.
A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson.
Page 233.
‘Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.’
Page 233.
‘How could they do it, how could they?’
‘I don’t’ know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it - seems that only children weep.
Page 235.
Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?’
Page 236.
‘I hate grown folks lookin’ at you,’ said Dill. ‘Makes you feel like you’ve done something.’
Page 236.
‘There are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.’
Page 237.
‘I think I’ll be a clown when I get grown,’ said Dill.
Jem and I stopped in our tracks.
‘Yes sir, a clown,’ he said. ‘There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.’
‘You got it backwards, Dill,’ said Jem. ‘Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.’
Pages 238-239.
You had to hand it to Atticus Finch, he could be right dry sometimes.
Page 240.
‘He told me havin’ a gun around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you.’
Page 240.
‘A jury’s vote’s supposed to be secret. Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don’t like to do that. Sometimes it’s unpleasant.’
Page 243.
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a court-room, be he any colour of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.
Page 243.
‘We generally get the juries we deserve.’
Page 244.
Why ladies hooked woolen rugs on boiling nights never became clear to me.
Page 246.
‘I’ve got it all figured out, now. I’ve thought about it a lot lately and I’ve got it figured out. There’s four kinds of folks int eh world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbours, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump and the Negroes.’
Page 249.
Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.
Page 250.
Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.
Page 250.
‘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.’
Page 251.
Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere, but this feeling was what Aunt Alexandra called being ‘spoiled’.
Page 253.
Mrs. Merriweather was one of those childless adults who find it necessary to assume a different tone of voice when speaking to children.
Page 255.
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.
Page 258.
‘Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we’re paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to o right. It’s that simple.’
Page 261.
To Maycomb, Tom’s death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger’s mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw.
Page 265.
Tom had been given due process of law to the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way. Then Mr. Underwood’s meaning became clear: Atticus had use every tool available to free men to sae Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men’s hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.
Page 266.
In spite of Atticus’s shortcomings as a parent, people were content to re-elect him to the state legislature that year, as usual, without opposition.
Page 268.
Perhaps Jem could provide the answer. Jem understood school things better than Atticus.
Page 271.
Jem was becoming almost as good as Atticus at making you feel right when things went wrong.
Page 285.
The man who brought Jem in was standing in a corner, leaning against the wall. He was some countryman I did not know. He had probably been at the pageant, and was in the vicinity when it happened. He must have heard our screams and come running.
Page 293.
‘Bob Ewell’s ling’ on the ground under that tree down yonder with a kitchen knife stuck up under his ribs. He’s dead, Mr. Finch.’
Page 294.
‘Who was it?’
‘Why there he is, Mr. Tate, he can tell you his name.’
As I said it, I half pointed to the man in the corner, but brought my arm down quickly lest Atticus reprimanded me for pointing. It was impolite to point.
Page 297.
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 form his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbour’s image blurred with my sudden tears.
‘Hey, Boo,’ I said.
Page 298.
People have a habit of doing everyday things even under the oddest conditions.
Page 299.
‘Mr. Finch,’ Mr. Tate said stolidly, ‘Bob Ewell fell on his knife. He killed himself.’
Page 301.
When Boo Radley shuffled to his feet, light from the living-room 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.
Page 305.
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 door knob. He gently released my hand, opened the door, went inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again.
Page 306.
Neighbours bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbour. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbours 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.
Page 307.
Atticus was right. One tie he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in then. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.
Page 308.
‘Nothin’s real scary except in books.’
Page 309.