To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes

To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes

Innocence

1. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing” (Lee 23).

2. “Well, if everybody in Maycomb knows what kind of folks the Ewells are they’d be glad to hire Helen...what’s rape, Cal?” (Lee 164-165).

3. “Dill’s eyes flickered at Jem, and Jem looked at the floor. Then he rose and broke the remaining code of our childhood” (Lee 187-188).

4. “That Walter’s as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin’s wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks” (Lee 304).

5. “After that, it didn’t matter whether they went or not. Jem said he would take me. Thus began our longest journey together” (Lee 340).

Courage

1. “ It was the first time I ever walked away from a fight. Somehow, if I fought Cecil I would let Atticus down” (Lee 102).

2. “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” (Lee 149).

3. “We watched Dill emerge be degrees. He was a tight fit. He stood up and eased his shoulders, turned his feet in their ankle sockets, rubbed the back of his neck. His circulation restored, he said, ‘Hey”” (Lee 186).

4. “The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there” (Lee 292-293).

5. “‘Atticus, I wasn't scared.’ He raised his eyebrows, and I protested: ‘Leastways not till I started telling Mr. Tate about it. Jem wasn't scared. Asked him and he said he wasn’t. Besides, nothin’s really scary except in books’” (Lee 375).

Understanding POV

1. “ You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view-” (Lee 39).

2. “Well, in the first place you never stopped to give me a chance to tell you my side of it- you just lit right into me” (Lee 113).

3. “‘Why do you reckon Boo Radley’s never run off?’ Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me. ‘Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to…’” (Lee 192).

4. “As Tom Robinson gave his testimony, it came to me that Mayella Ewell must have been that loneliest person in the world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who had not been out of his house in twenty-five years” (Lee 256).

5. “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough” (Lee 374).

Inequality

1. “I was not 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” (Lee 54).

2. “I guess it ain’t your fault if Uncle Atticus is a nigger-lover besides, but I’m here to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family-” (Lee 110).

3. “All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white” (Lee 229).

4. “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life” (Lee 295).

5. “Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home-” ( Lee 331).

Fairness

1. “What Mr. Radley did was his own business. If he wanted to come out, he would. If he wanted to stay inside his own house he had the right to stay inside free from the attentions of inquisitive children” (Lee 65).

2. “I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn’t shoot till he had to , and he had to today” (Lee 130).

3. “I don’t care one speck. It ain’t right, somehow it ain’t right to do ‘em that way. Hasn’t anybody got any business talkin’ like that-it just makes me sick” (Lee 266).

4. “‘How could they do it, how could they?’ I don’t know, but they did it. 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’” (Lee 285).

5. “Equal rights for all, special privileges for none” (Lee 328).

Journal #1

One day when Atticus caught Jem, Scout, and Dill playing “One Man’s Family”, Scout got the idea that Atticus didn't approve of their game. Jem replied that Atticus would have said so if he didn’t want them to play the game, but Scout was still apprehensive, “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 someone else to play with” (Lee 54). Jem told Scout that if she was going to act like a girl, she didn’t deserve to go on adventures with him and Dill. Jem’s stereotypical view of a girl caused him to treat Scout with less respect just because of her gender. Jem believed that if Scout was going to act like a girl, she wasn't equal to him or Dill because he believed boys were superior to girls. Jem’s unfair treatment of Scout because of her gender stems from Maycomb’s consistent pattern of inequality. Everyday in Maycomb, Jem sees people treat others with less respect because they are of a different race or gender. One example of gender inequality in Maycomb occurred during the criminal trial when women were excluded from the jury pool. Even though Atticus teaches his kids that they must treat everybody with respect, no matter their race or gender, Jem still shows signs of developing Maycomb’s disease of inequality based on the way he treats Scout.

As I read about the dynamics of the relationships between Dill, Scout, and Jem, it reminded me of the way my brother, cousin, and I used to act around each other. I have three male cousins and a brother which means that I only had boys to play with in my family as I grew up. My brother, cousin, and I used to play together all the time. I loved playing with my older brother and cousin because it made me feel more grownup and less like the baby of the family, but like Scout, my brother didn’t see me as just one of his friends, but as his annoying little sister. My brother and cousin loved to play wiffle ball in my grandma's backyard and I always begged to play with them. They usually let me play, but they always acted like I was ruining their game since I was a little girl and I couldn't match their “manly” standards of hitting a little ball with a plastic bat over the neighbors fence. I was never seen as an equal to my brother or cousin, which made me very upset but it also made me learn that just because someone perceives you as being weak or lesser of a person, it doesn't mean that you have to comply with their stereotypes. Scout was a girl, but she was also courageous and intelligent. She didn't let Jem’s bias against girls affect how she acted. When I decided to not let my brothers opinion affect how I felt, I became a lot more secure with myself, and ironically, I became a much better wiffle ball player.

Journal #2

In the schoolyard, Cecil Jacobs was insulting Atticus. Wanting to defend her father, Scout’s instinct was to punch Cecil, but instead she walked away and realized, “It was the first time I ever walked away from a fight. Somehow, if I fought Cecil I would let Atticus down” (Lee 102). Scout realizes that by walking away from Cecil and obeying Atticus, she is being much more courageous than she would be if she socked Cecil in the face. Even though Cecil called Scout a coward as she walked away from the fight, it didn’t effect Scout because she knew that what she did showed real courage, and that there was nothing cowardly about walking away from Cecil Jacobs. She was proud of her actions because they complied with what Atticus’s wishes which made her feel more noble than she would have felt if she did end up hitting Cecil. Her inclination was to defend Atticus by fighting Cecil, but by walking away she defended him even more because she represented his values.

A lot of the decisions I make in life are made based on whether or not I think my parents would be proud of my decision. One of my biggest motivations in life is to make my parents proud of me. When I was in elementary school, there was this group of girls that picked on this one girl in my class, her name was Liesel. My mom was friends with the Liesel’s mom so she would ask me about how Liesel was doing in school. I would lie and say she was doing fine, not telling her that she was getting picked on. I remember feeling so guilty about not standing up to the group of girls, but I was scared to confront them because I was friends with a lot of the girls in that group. One day during recess, the girls were playing a game where they pretended that Liesel had some kind of disease, so they had to run away from her and no one could talk to her. The girls asked me to play, and my first instinct was to just politely decline and let them carry on playing their game, but as I thought about my decision, I imagined what my mom would think if she saw how these girls were treating Liesel. I summoned all of my courage and finally stood up to the group of girls. I told them that what they were doing was very wrong and that they needed to stop picking on Liesel. They stopped playing the game and I invited Liesel to come play with my other friends and me. That day I felt so happy because I knew my mom would be proud of me if she knew what I’d done, just like how Atticus would be proud of Scout for being the bigger person and walking away from a fight.