To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. In the opening paragraph of the novel, narrator Scout creates suspence when she begins with her brother Jem’s broken arm. The answer as to what happened is not given until the very end of the story.

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. Scout Finch the narrator describes Maycomb and the small-town life that defined her childhood. It suggests a kind of sleepy town where not much ever happened. This sets the stage for the conflict of Tom Robinson’s trial.

There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. Scout speaks of the “vague optimism”, a kind of hope, that was spreading throughout Maycomb. The quote about fear references the hope offerd by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933. He encourages people to look past their fears during the Great Depression.

According to Miss Stephanie, Boo was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from The Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. Boo Radley is portrayed as a crazy maniac because of rumors spread about him. This is one of the stories Jem hears from Miss Stephanie Crawford. Because of this Scout and Jem look upon Boo with suspicion and fear.
Jem's description of Boo Radley

Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were blood-stained – if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. While Boo Radley isn’t seen outside his house until the end of the novel, Jem is able to provide a most fantastical description of him based on local gossip and prejudice and a child’s imagination. The invisible Boo becomes the Maycomb Boogieman, a monster straight out of a gothic horror story that children are afraid of. The idea of Boo as being a kindly, innocent and vulnerable man has not yet dawned on them at this early stage of the story.

Jem wanted Dill to know once and for all that he wasn’t scared of anything: “It’s just that I can’t think of a way to make him come out without him gettin’ us.” Besides, Jem had his little sister to think of.
When he said that, I knew he was afraid.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. Dill accuses Jem of being scared. Jem tries to act like the older kid and Scout’s protective brother and show that he is brave when it comes to Boo Radley. Scout’s interpretation from Jem’s words is that he is afraid of Boo.

The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street we thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost invisible movement, and the house was still.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. There is an ominous feel about the Radley house, with the small flicker of movement suggesting someone is watching from inside. The children are fascinated with Boo who never comes out of the house, but he is interested in them also. The scene foreshadows Boo’s entrance into the children’s lives.
Scout's teacher criticizes Atticus's teaching In Teach

“Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now.”
I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 2. Scout’s first grade teacher Miss Caroline shows her prejudice towards her pupil when she makes Scout feel bad about being able to read. “Now you tell your father not to teach you any more”, she says. This is small-minded and hypocritical for an educator. Scout should be proud of her ability at such a young age.

I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church – was it then I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills To Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow – anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 2. Scout after having a row with her teacher Miss Caroline Fisher who disapproves of Atticus having already taught Scout to read.

Walter Cunningham’s face told everybody in the first grade he had hookworms. His absence of shoes told us how he got them. People caught hookworms going barefooted in barnyards and hog wallows. If Walter had owned any shoes he would have worn them the first day of school and then discarded them until mid-winter. He did have on a clean shirt and neatly mended overalls.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 2. Walter Cunningham Jr., son of poor farmer Walter Cunningham, is a boy in Scout’s first-grade class. Everybody about him speaks of his poverty.

I thought I had made things sufficiently clear. It was clear enough to the rest of us: Walter Cunningham was sitting there lying his head off. He didn’t forget his lunch, he didn’t have any. He had none today nor would he have any tomorrow or the next day. He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same time in his life…
“The Cunninghams never took anything they can’t pay back – no church baskets and no scrip stamps. They never took anything off of anybody, they get along on what they have. They don’t have much, but they get along on it.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 2. Walter Cunningham Jr. arrives to school with no lunch and refuses money from teacher Miss Caroline. Scout tries to explain to the clueless Miss Caroline how farmer Walter Cunningham and his family are poor, work hard for anything they have and young Walter is too proud to take the money because he cannot pay it back. Scout gets in trouble for this and Miss Caroline slaps her with a ruler and makes her stand in the corner.

Catching Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard gave me some pleasure, but when I was rubbing his nose in the dirt Jem came by and told me to stop. “You’re bigger’n he is,” he said.
“He’s as old as you, nearly,” I said. “He made me start off on the wrong foot.”
“Let him go, Scout. Why?”
“He didn’t have any lunch,” I said, and explained my involvement in Walter’s dietary affairs.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Scout beats up Walter Cunningham Jr. at school, because she got in trouble for talking and she blamed it on Walter. Scout gets into many physical confrontations with other classmates and takes pleasure in beating them up, in this case Walter. Jem on the other hand displays more maturity and is more reasonable in his attitude towards Walter, believing that physical violence is not always the best way to tackle an issue.

“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?”
“He ain’t company, Cal, he’s just a Cunningham – ”
“Hush your mouth! Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’s yo’ comp’ny, and don’t you let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways like you was so high and mighty!”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Calpurnia rebukes Scout, after Scout makes several rude comments that embarrass Walter Cunningham Jr. at the Finch meal table when he pours syrup all over his meal. Calpurnia wants Scout to show respect to guests at all times and not judge them for their unusual eating habits. She scolds Scout over her slur on farmer Walter Cunningham’s family, who are considered inferior by many locals.

Atticus greeted Walter and began a discussion about crops neither Jem nor I could follow.
“Reason I can’t pass the first grade, Mr. Finch, is I’ve had to stay out ever’ spring an’ help Papa with the choppin’, but there’s another’n at the house now that’s field size.”
…While Walter piled food on his plate, he and Atticus talked together like two men.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Walter Cunningham Jr. is having lunch with the Finch family and explains to Atticus that he has been unable to pass first grade yet is because he has to help his father Walter with the crops. Atticus is very respectful of young Walter and treats him like an adult.
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - Atticus Finch and daughter Scout In Empathy

“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Atticus Finch’s advice to daughter Scout, after she comes home from school upset and angry that her teacher Miss Caroline wants her to stop reading at home. This is one of the most famous quotes in the novel. Atticus is saying we should not judge a person unless we go through the same situation.
Atticus Finch on bending the law

“Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases. In your case, the law remains rigid. So to school you must go.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Atticus lays down the law to Scout about going to school. She doesn’t see why she has to go when Bob Ewell’s son Burris doesn’t. But Atticus explains that the Ewells are a special case. One of the town’s poorest families with Bob Ewell drinking all the money he gets, they are allowed leave school when they want, hunt out of season, because the authorities take pity on them.

Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations. None of them had done an honest day’s work in his recollection. He said that some Christmas, when he was getting rid of the tree, he would take me with him and show me where and how they lived. They were people, but they lived like animals

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Atticus lays down the law to Scout about going to school. She doesn’t see why she has to go when Bob Ewell’s son Burris doesn’t. The usually understanding and non-judgmental Atticus has strong words to say about the Ewells. But to be fair to him, Atticus is quite right to speak disapprovingly of the neglectful way Bob Ewell treats his children. They are often left to starve while their father spends the money for their food on whiskey. Atticus is a man who believes strongly in taking care of family.

“It’s against the law, all right,” said my father, “and it’s certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Atticus explains to Scout why Bob Ewell is allowed to hunt out of season and break the law. Everyone is aware that his children are starving because he spends his welfare checks on alcohol.
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