For the life of me, I did not understand how he[Atticus] could sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with a Confederate Army relic.

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets -

It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike--in the second place, folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do.

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

There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.