Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.” “Well, I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.
I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
It's better to be silent than to be a fool.
With him, life was routine, without him, life was unbearable. I stayed miserable for two days.
Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.
Havin’ a gun around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you.
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.
Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again.
There’s some folks who don’t eat like us,” she whispered fiercely, “but you ain’t called on to contradict ‘em at the table when they don’t. That boy’s yo’ comp’ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?
I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.
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.
People have a habit of doing everyday things even under the oddest conditions.
Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced.
I was proceeding on the dim theory, aside from the innate attractiveness of such words, that if Atticus discovered I had picked them up at school he wouldn’t make me go.
One time I asked her to have a chew and she said no thanks, that – chewing gum cleaved to her palate and rendered her speechless,” said Jem carefully. “Doesn’t that sound nice?
Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep Boo out of sight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the bed most of the time. Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.
There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads – they couldn’t be fair if they tried.
Angel-bright, life-in-death; get off the road, don’t suck my breath.
Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies – Scout.
My Lord, Aunt Stephanie, you almost gave me a heart attack!