Quotes from book
To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. Instantly successful, widely read in high schools and middle schools in the United States, it has become a classic of modern American literature, winning the Pulitzer Prize. The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

Harper Lee photo

“There's just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to 'em. Even then, they ain't worth the bullet it takes to shoot 'em.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

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

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

“You can pet him, Mr. Arthur. He's asleep…”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

“I'm Charles Baker Harris… I can read”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

“You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

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

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

“I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

“Nothin’s real scary except in books.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

“See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl its mortifyin”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

“Dill?"
Mm?"
Why do you reckon Boo Radleys never run off?"
Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.
Maybe he doesn't have anywhere to run off to”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee photo

“…reasonable men, they went because we were there. There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Harper Lee photo

“So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses…. That proves something — that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 2, ch. 16
Atticus Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Harper Lee photo

“The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me — he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 7
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Harper Lee photo

“Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 9
Atticus Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Harper Lee photo

“Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin‘ that way, why do you send me to school?”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Harper Lee photo

“From now on it’ll be everybody less one”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Harper Lee photo

“When the new wore off his grandfather’s watch, and carrying it became a day’s burdensome task, Jem no longer felt the necessity of ascertaining the hour every five minutes.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Harper Lee photo

“Apparently, Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 2, ch. 18
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)