To Kill a Mockingbird

By Harper Lee

QUOTATION: 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.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
ATTRIBUTION: Harper Lee (b. 1926), U.S. novelist. To Kill a Mockingbird, ch. 10 (1960).

QUOTATION: Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
ATTRIBUTION: Harper Lee (b. 1926), U.S. author. Scout, in To Kill a Mockingbird, pt. 1, ch. 2 (1960).

QUOTATION: The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
ATTRIBUTION: Harper Lee (b. 1926), U.S. author. Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird, pt. 1, ch. 11 (1960).

QUOTATION: As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.
ATTRIBUTION: Harper Lee (b. 1926), U.S. author. Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird, pt. 2, ch. 23 (1960).

QUOTATION: Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.
ATTRIBUTION: Harper Lee (b. 1926), U.S. author. Calpurnia, in To Kill a Mockingbird, pt. 2, ch. 12 (1960).

QUOTATION: I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.
ATTRIBUTION: Harper Lee (b. 1926), U.S. author. Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird, pt. 2, ch. 20 (1960).