"She's like a national treasure. She's someone who has made a difference … with this book. The book is still as strong as it ever was, and so is the film. All the kids in the United States read this book and see the film in the seventh and eighth grades and write papers and essays. My husband used to get thousands and thousands of letters from teachers who would send them to him."

"I remember the lasting impression that Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird had on me. I read that book again every decade or so."

"When the new wore off his grandfather’s watch, and carrying it became a day’s burdensome task, Jem no longer felt the necessity of ascertaining the hour every five minutes."

"There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire."

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."

"...reasonable men, they went because we were there. There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried."

"Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there."

"...he said if enough people—a stadium full, maybe—were to concentrate on one thing, such as setting a tree afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite of its own accord. I toyed with the idea of asking everyone below to concentrate on setting Tom Robinson free, but"

"Each child was supposed to clip an item from a newspaper, absorb its contents, and reveal them to the class. This practice allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing in front of his fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; delivering a short talk made him word-conscious; learning his current event strengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than ever anxious to return to the Group."

"...brown but backwards"

"...before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself."

"Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again."

"Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin‘ that way, why do you send me to school?"

"That’s because you can’t hold something in your mind but a little while, said Jem. It’s different with grown folks, we—"

"From now on it’ll be everybody less one—"

"Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough."

"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..." "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

"In the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed."

"I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks."

"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown.... 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."

"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. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal."

"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it — whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash."

"I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up."

"Slowly but surely I began to see the pattern of questions: from questions that Mr.Gilmer did not deem sufficiently irrelevant or immaterial to object to, Atticus was quietly building up before the jury the picture of the Ewell's home life."

"Apparently, Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail."

"“There has been a request,” Judge Taylor said, “that this courtroom be cleared of spectators, or at least of women and children, a request that will be denied for the time being. People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for, and they have the right to subject their children to it, but I can assure you of one thing: you will receive what you see and hear in silence or you will leave this courtroom, but you won’t leave it until the whole boiling of you come before me on contempt charges. Mr. Ewell, you will keep your testimony within the confines of Christian English usage, if that is possible. Proceed, Mr. Gilmer.”"

"So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something — that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children."

"Polonsky, along with Chaplin and Losey, remains one of the great casualties of the anti-Communist hysteria of the fifties."

"Twenty-one years between first and second films is longer than any director should have to wait. The case of Polonsky is one of the most dismal hangovers from the McCarthy period."

"Indians don't last in prison. They weren't born for it like the whites."

"What you doin' with such a big ol' dog in New York?" "Never had a wife."

"Yeah, yeah, I know I got rid of the headache. Now I got cancer."

"What do you mean "gangsters"? It's business."

"What are you gonna do? Kill me? Everybody dies."

"It was a great pleasure to make a movie again. Nothing is better; perhaps revolution, but there you have to succeed and be right, dangers which never attach themselves to making movies, and dreaming."

"First of all, directing is an idea that you have of a total flow of images that are going on, which are incidentally actors, words, and objects in space. It's an idea you have of yourself, like the idea you have of your own personality which finds its best representation in the world in terms of specific flows of imaginary images. That's what directing is."

"I'd like to be remembered for being a good, kind, loving, gentle man who attempted to live wisely, and who cared a lot."

"I have learned that love is the most powerful force available to us. When we have real love we have the strength to perform miracles."

"You can't imagine the joy I feel when I hear that something I've said or done or written has helped others to regain their sense of dignity, to motivate them to develop their unique potential, to encourage them to reach out to others in love."

"We are born for love, but it will die if not nurtured."

"We can ask ourselves daily what we have done to make the world a better place, to make someone smile, to help someone to feel more secure, etc. It's the simple things which have the greatest effect. We must never underestimate the strength of a smile or act of kindness."

"The essence of love is getting out of oneself and into others. When we care less about our feelings, our rights, our happiness, our security, etc., and begin to concern ourselves with the feelings, rights, happiness, and security of others, we will have found the true power of love."

"We live in a small world. Not a leaf falls that doesn't affect a myriad of things. When we reach out to someone in love and the effect is made — everyone, everything which comes in contact with the person we've effected is better for it. Of course, the converse is true, too."

"Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand."

"Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it, hotheadedness isn't."

"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 quicker than adults, an evasion simply muddles 'em."

"The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me — he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts."