I didn't know how you were going to do it, but from now on I'll never worry about what'll become of you, son, you'll always have an idea.

"When they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..." His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.

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. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies.

There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is the court.

Way back about nineteen-twenty there was a Klan... The Ku Klux's gone... It'll never come back.

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