To kill a mockingbird

“Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but 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. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus

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, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 16, spoken by the character Atticus

"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off." "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them." "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks." ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22, I think Dill is playing the part of Truman Capote here

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. 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. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23, spoken by the character Atticus

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23, spoken by the character Scout

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, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 7

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 quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 9, spoken by the character Atticus

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 9, spoken by the character Atticus


It's a great book, and what makes it so endearing is that the narrator is just a little girl and we get to see the characters and events through her point of view. I think the author chose the little girl as her narrator simply because children are the most 'unbiased' I guessed, why she chose a girl and not a boy might be because the author's a lady and could write more realistically, least that's what I think.

It's a great book for parents as well as Atticus is a really great father and man. He knows that actions speak louder than words and hence he tries to be a role model for his children. He treats his children with respect and trusts them as well, which reminds me of another book, toto-chan, the girl by the window which is also a great book.