Harper Lee

I do wish this time you'd try to dress better while you're home. Folks in town get the wrong impression of you. They think you are--ah--slumming.

Atticus, you must be wrong." "How's that?" "Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong. . ." "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live 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.

It was a place where, if troubles did not vanish, they were made bearable.

How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwood's editorial. Senseless killing--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 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.

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

Let the dead bury the dead...

I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick

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.

In their own way, Tom Robinson's manners were as good as Atticus's

If he__ 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_

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

It__ never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn__ hurt you.

As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons.

We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe. Some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they__e born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cupcakes than others; some are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.

Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was a Graham from Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the state legislature. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was the product of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born, and two years later our mother died from a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that, I knew better than to bother him.

I wanted you to see something about her__ 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__ when you know you__e 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.

She was the bravest person I ever knew.

It was 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.