To Kill a Mockingbird

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. People moved slowly then. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with.

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.

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.

I 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's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.

Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like. Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things. Atticus, he was real nice. Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.