Quote collection
200 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces."
"Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel."
"There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them."
"I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks."
"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown.... 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."
"Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?"
"We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple."
"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."
"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."
"Ladies pick funny things to be proud of."
"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."
"This time we aren't fighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home."
"Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad."
"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown,' said Dill. Jem and I stopped in our tracks. Yes sir, a clown,' he said. '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."
"Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing."
"There's no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There's no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be."
"I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide."
"Things are never as bad as they seem."
"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."
"If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. It's because he wants to stay inside."