"As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons."

"It ain't time to worry yet. I'll let you know when."

"I think there might be a better way,change the law."

"You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

"Things are always better in the morning."

"If he's not he should be by now. The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets."

"We can't always have our druthers."

"Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions."

"Ladies pick funny things to be proud of."

"Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill."

"Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men."

"Mary Webster was on the blower. Her advance agents saw Hank and me swimming in the middle of the river last night with no clothes on.H'rm, said Atticus. He touched his glasses. I hope you weren't doing the backstroke."

"I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that's why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with."

"As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal."

"There was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus's vest front. I buried my head in it and listened to the small internal noises that went on behind the light blue cloth: his watch ticking, the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of his breathing.'Your stomach's growling,' I said.'I know it,' he said."

"Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen."

"With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable."

"We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe. Some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cupcakes than others; some are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men."

"I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Macomb it's like leaving the world."

"They are simple people, most of them, but that doesn't make them subhuman.You are telling them Jesus loves them, but not much."

"Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced."

"The only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that it's government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living in. The only thing in America that is still unique in this tired world is that a man can go as far as his brains will take him or he can go to hell if he wants to, but it won't be that way much longer."

"Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent."

"I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin' after you."

"I wanted you see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand."

"They had never been able to sustain fifteen minutes' conversation with one another without advancing irreconcilable points of view, invigorating in friendships, but in close blood relations producing only uneasy cordiality."

"I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement."

"The white supremacists are really pretty smart. If they can't scare us with the essential inferiority line, they'll wrap it in a miasma of sex, because that's the only thing they know is feared in our fundamentalist hearts down here."

"One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them."

"It had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had been one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing, keeping up with Jem, and besting anyone her own age in any contest requiring physical prowess."

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view."

"Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends."

"How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwood's editorial. Senseless killing--Tom had been given due process of law to the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way. 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. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed."

"People have a habit of doing everyday things even under the oddest conditions."

"But before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself."

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

"There are just some kind of men who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one."

"They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night."

"It's not time to worry yet."

"We're so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we've got men like Atticus to go for us."

"I wanted you to see something about her-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. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew."

"Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?"

"Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill."

"Everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowing."

"Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we're paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.''Who?' Aunt Alexandra never knew she was echoing her twelve-year-old nephew.'The handful of people in this town who that that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord's kindness am I."

"People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for, and they have a right to subject their children to it."

"I willed myself to stay awake, but the rain was so soft and the room was so warm and his voice was so deep and his knee was so snug that I slept."

"The gum looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelled all right. I licked it and waited for a while. When I did not die, I crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley's Double Mint."

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