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My wife and I named our firstborn son after a character in this novel, and I cannot wait until he reads it and understands why. Chapter for chapter, no other novel communicates so many profound moral lessons, so effectively encourages empathy for others—be they shy recluses, mean old women, penniless school children, or members of different racial groups—or so deftly pulls back the curtain on the cultural pathologies that lead good people to “go stark raving mad�� and do evil things.

Jem: “How could they do it, how could they?��

Atticus: “I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it �� seems that only children weep.��

This novel about small-town life in 1930’s Alabama is amazing for another reason: page for page, it contains more story (and more memorable characters) than almost any other book. From the school experiences and summer adventures of young Scout Finch—a fist-fighting, overall-wearing tomgirl—her older brother Jem and their lying friend Dill, to the courtroom proceedings that take their town by storm, wherein Scout and Jem’s dad, Atticus Finch, stands up against his neighbors to defend a Black man accused of assaulting a White woman. The court scene is incredible, and the dialogue in it echoes across the decades, being as relevant today as ever.

Mr. Gilmer: “If you had a clear conscience, why were you scared?��

Tom: “Like I says before, it weren’t safe for any [Black person] to be in a �� fix like that.��
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Mr. Gilmer: “Scared of arrest, scared you’d have to face up to what you did?��

Tom: “No suh, scared I’d hafta face up to what I didn’t do.��

MEMORABLE QUOTES:

“Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’s yo�� comp’ny, and don’t you let me catch you remarkin�� on their ways like you was so high and mighty!��

“You are too young to understand it �� but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of �� oh, of your father.��

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.��

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.��

“A mob’s always made up of people, no matter what �� That proves something—that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human. Hmp, maybe we need apolice force of children.��

Atticus: “Why did you run?�� Tom: “I was scared, suh.�� Atticus: “Why were you scared?�� Tom: “Mr Finch, if you was a [Black person] like me, you’d be scared, too.��

“But 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 a court �� Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.��

“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?��