« When enough years had
gone by to enable us to look back on them… »
« All we had was Simon
Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by
his stinginess. »
« Maycomb County had
recently been told that it had nothing to fear but itself. »
« Jem and I found our
father satisfactory : he played with us, read to us, and treated us with
courteous detachment. »
« She was all angles and
bones. »
« Dill had seen Dracula,
a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning of respect. »
« Routine contentment
was : improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin chinaberry
trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas based on
the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton and Edgar Rice Burroughs. »
« I would be starting to
school in a week . I never looked forward more to anything in my life. »
« I never deliberatly
learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily
papers. »
« You never really
understand a person until you consider things from his point of view »
« Grown folks don’t have
hidin’ places. »
« Do you smell my
mimosa ? It’s like angels’ breath this evening. »
« 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, and you can look down the street and see the
results. »
« It’s bad children like
you makes the seasons change. »
« 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. »
« Aunt Alexandra would
have been analogous to Mount Everest : throughout my early life, she was
cold and there. »
« I liked to smell
him ; he was like a bottle of alcohol and something pleasantly
sweet. »
« You want to grow up to
be a lady, don’t you ? I said not particularly. »
« Talking to Francis gave
me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean. He was the most
boring child I ever met. »
« Your daughter gave me
my first lessons this afternoon. She said I didn’t understand children much and
told me why. She was quite right. »
« When a child asks you
something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it.
Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and
evasion simply muddles ‘em. No, ‘ my father mused, ‘you had the right answer
this afternoon, but the wrong reasons. Bad language is a stage all children go
through, and it dies with time, when they learn they’re not attracting attention
with it. »
« 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.
‘You 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.’ »
« He walked quickly, but
I thought he moved like an underwater swimmer : time had slowed to a
nauseating crawl. »
« People in their right
minds never take pride in their talents »
« You just hold your head
high and be a gentleman. Whatever’s she says to you, it’s your job not to let
her make you mad.’ »
« You look like a picture
this evening. »
« I do my best to love
everybody. »
« Although Maycomb was
ignored during the War Between the States, Reconstruction rule and economic
ruin forced the town to grow. It grew inward. New people so rarely settled
there, the same families married the same families until the members of the
community looked faintly alike. »
« Beautiful things
floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he
preferred the magic of hiw own inventions. He could add and substract faster
than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies
slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking
himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy
island there rose the faded image of a grey house with sad brown doors. »
« He said his only
exercise was walking. 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. »
« ‘Do you really think
so ?’ This was the second time I heard Atticus ask that question in two
days, and it meant somebody’s man would get jumped. »
« Atticus had said it was
the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not
about what you were interested in. »
« 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.’ »
« We knew she wore a grin
of the uttermost wickedness. »
« She knew full well the
enormity of her offence, but because her desires were stronger than the code
she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. »
« 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. »
« I waited I thought,
Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who
can keep a jury ou so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well,
we’re making a step – it’s just a baby-step, but it’s a step.’ »
« 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. »
« I guess Tom was tired
of white men’s chances and preferred to take his own. »
« 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. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell
opened her mouth and screamed. »
« Jem was becoming almost
as good as Atticus at making you feel right when things went wrong. »
« That was the stillness
before the thunderstorm. »
« ‘How’d you know you
were under the tree, you couldn’t see thunder out there.’
‘I was barefooted, and Jem
says the ground’s always cooler under a tree.’
‘We’ll have to make him a
deputy, go ahead.’ »
« His lips parted into a
timid smile, and out neighbour’s image blurred with my sudden tears. ‘Hey, Boo,
I said. »
« Atticus looked like he
needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my
might. »
To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper
Lee
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