"I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference."

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

"Every man's island, Jean Louise, every man's watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscience."

"You deny them hope... You are telling them that Jesus loves them, but not much."

"Whatever she says to you, it's your jobnot to let her make you mad."

"Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it."

"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."

"Then Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: 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."

"Something is wrong with me, it's something about me. it has to be me because all those people cannot have changed."

"Autumn was her happiest season. There was an expectancy about its sounds and shapes: the distant thunk pomp of leather and young bodies on the practice field near her house made her think of bands and cold Coca-Colas, parched peanuts and the sight of people's breath in the air. There was even something to look forward to when school started - renewals of old feuds and friendships, weeks of learning again what one half forgot in the long summer. Fall was hot-supper time with everything to eat one missed in the morning when too sleepy to enjoy it."

"I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick."

"So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process."

"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 and mighty! Yo' folks might be better'n the Cunninghams but it don't count for nothin' the way you're disgracin' 'em."

"Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

"He was letting you break your icons one by one. he was letting you reduce him to the status of a human being."

"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

"If we followed our feelings all the time, we'd be like cats chasin' their tails."

"She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it."

"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that."

"In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one's mind incapable of definite purpose."

"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 to but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's garden, 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."

"When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em."

"We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple."

"I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetuated fraud against himself."

"I do wish this time you'd try to dress better while you're home. Folks in town get the wrong impression of you. They think you are--ah--slumming."

"Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. 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 frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy...and no money to buy it with."

"You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here."

"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."

"Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

"Boo and I walked up the steps to the porch. His fingers found the doorknob. He gently released my hand, opened the door, enter inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again."

"I do my best to love everybody...I'm hard put,sometimes- baby,its never an insult o be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is,it doesn't hurt you."

"You confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man's heart, and a man's failings " I'll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes 'em like all of us. You were an emotional cripple, leaning on him, getting answers from him, assuming that your answers would always be his answers."

"Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts."

"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."

"She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl."

"She was the bravest person I ever knew."

"It was a place where, if troubles did not vanish, they were made bearable."

"Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

"Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to."

"Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says that the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how to do it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won't you?"

"Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open."

"There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire."

"It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you."

"Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in."

"You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them."

"Alexandra had been married for thirty-three years; if it had made any impression on her one way or another, she never showed it."

"I just know Maycomb. I'm not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I'm certainly aware of it."

"But in the absence of eye-witness there's always a doubt, sometimes only the shadow of a doubt. The law says 'reasonable doubt', but I think a defendant's entitled to the shadow of doubt. There's always the possibility, no matter how improbable, that he's innocent."

"There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads-they couldn't be fair if they tried."