Mutual defiance made them alike.
We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us.
Finders were keepers unless title was proven.
Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
You can’t really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.
She’s an old lady and she’s ill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.
Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.
You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that’s the way I want to live.
I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.
Let the dead bury the dead.
Where are your pants, son?
I don’t hafta take his sass.
My father is one of the few men I’ve known who has genuine humility, and it lends him a natural dignity. He has absolutely no ego drive, and so he is one of the most beloved men in this part of the state.
It’s quite a thing, if you’ve never been in or known a small southern town. The people are not particularly sophisticated, naturally. They’re not worldly wise in any way. But they tell you a story whenever they see you.
When a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains.
My book had a universal theme. It’s not a “racial” novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization, not necessarily Southern civilization.
Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up – some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.
The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets -.
Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.