I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. Scout

If this thing's hushed up it'll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I've tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.. if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn't meet his eye, and the day I can't do that I'll know I've lost him. I don't want to lose him and Scout, because they're all I've got.

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.

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

Try fighting with your head for a change... it's a good one, even if it does resist learning.

Jen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding.

Calpurnia evidently remembered a rainy Sunday when we were both fatherless and teacherless. Let to its own devices, the class tied Eunice Ann Simpson to a chair and placed her in the furnace room. We forgot her, trooped upstairs to church, and were listening quietly to the sermon when a dreadful banging issued from the radiator pipes, persisting until someone investigated and brought forth Eunice Ann saying she didn't want to play Shadrach any more - Jem Finch said she wouldn't get burnt if she had enough faith, but it was hot down there.