Harper Lee

There was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus's vest front. I buried my head in it and listened to the small internal noises that went on behind the light blue cloth: his watch ticking, the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of his breathing.'Your stomach's growling,' I said.'I know it,' he said.

A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishing pole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. . . . Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him. 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.

People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for, and they have a right to subject their children to it.

He might have hurt me a little,' Atticus conceded, 'but sn, you'll understand folks a little better when you're older. A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr Cunnignham was part of a mob last night, but he ws still a man.Every mob in every little Souhern town is always made up of people you know - doesn't say much for them, does it?''I'll say ot, ' said Jem.'So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses, didn't it?' said Atticus. '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.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness_ sake. But don__ make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasionquicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles __m. No, 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__e notattracting attention with it. Hotheadedness isn__.

Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... 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.

Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says that the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how to do it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won't you?

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 see it through no matter what.- Atticus Finch

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

We__e so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we__e got men like Atticus to go for us.

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.

Don__ talk like that, Dill,_ said Aunt Alexandra. __t__ not becoming to a child. It__ _ cynical.___ ain__ cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin_ the truth__ not cynical, is it?___he way you tell it, it is.

Honey, the sun rises and sets with that Bill of hers. Everything he says is Gospel. She loves her man.""Is that what loving your man is?""Has a lot to do with it."Jean Louise said, "You mean losing your own identity, don't you?""In a way, yes," said Henry. "Then I doubt if I shall ever marry.

Alexandra had been married for thirty-three years; if it had made any impression on her one way or another, she never showed it.

...baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. So don't let Mrs Dubose get you down. She had enough troubles or her own.

She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.