To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes

Quote 1: "I told Calpurnia to just wait, I'd fix her: one of these days when she wasn't looking I'd go off and drown myself in Barker's Eddy and then she'd be sorry. Besides, I added, she'd already gotten me in trouble once today: she had taught me to write and it was all her fault." Chapter 3, pg. 29

Quote 2: "cootie" Chapter 3, pg. 30

Quote 3: "It was then, I suppose, that Jem and I first began to part company. Sometimes I did not understand him, but my periods of bewilderment were short-lived." Chapter 6, pg. 61

Quote 4: "pass the damn ham, please" Chapter 9, pg. 83

Quote 5: "that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that ... I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year . . . . but when I asked Atticus about it, he said there were already enough sunbeams in the family and to go on about my business, he didn't mind me much the way I was." Chapter 9, pg. 86

Quote 6: "'nigger-lover'" Chapter 9, pg. 87

Quote 7: "'whore-lady'" Chapter 9, pg. 89

Quote 8: "I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said." Chapter 9, pg. 93

Quote 9: "'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.'" Chapter 10, pg. 94

Quote 10: "It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived." Chapter 11, pg. 105

Quote 11: "'The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.'" Chapter 11, pg. 109

Quote 12: "'It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.'" Chapter 11, pg. 116

Quote 13: "know[s] now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work." Chapter 13, pg. 137

Quote 14: "'What did your father see in the window, the crime of rape or the best defense to it?'" Chapter 18, pg. 190

Quote 15: "Maycomb gave [the Ewells] Christmas baskets, welfare money, and the back of its hand." Chapter 19, pg. 194

Quote 16: "'They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only children weep.'" Chapter 22, pg. 215

Quote 17: "Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed." Chapter 25, pg. 244

Quote 18: "'Hey, Boo.'" Chapter 29, pg. 273

Quote 19: "'There's a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it's dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time....'" Chapter 30, pg. 278

Quote 20: "'[m]ost people are, Scout, when you finally see them.'" Chapter 31, pg. 284