To Kill a Mockingbird (film) Quotations

To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1962 film about Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the Depression-era South, who defends a black man against an undeserved rape charge and his kids against prejudice.

Directed by Robert Mulligan. Written by Horton Foote, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee.

The most beloved and widely read Pulitzer Prize Winner now comes vividly alive on the screen! taglines

Atticus Finch

I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house, and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted, if I could hit 'em, but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird... Well, I reckon because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat people's gardens, don't nest in the corncribs. They don't do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

She lied in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime. She has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson — a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was, for her, a daily reminder of what she did. Now what did she do? She tempted a Negro. She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.

The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the Sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted. Confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption, the evil assumption, that all Negros lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women; an assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so a quiet, humble, respectable Negro, who has had the unmitigated temerity to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against two white people.

Now gentlemen, in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system. That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality. Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this man to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God, believe Tom Robinson.

Narrator (Scout as an adult)

Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy... and no money to buy it with. Although Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself... that summer, I was six years old.

Neighbors bring food with death... and flowers with sickness... and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife... and our lives. One time Atticus said... you never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough. The summer that had begun so long ago had ended, and another summer had taken its place. And a fall. And Boo Radley had come out. I was to think of these days many times, of Jem and Dill... and Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. And Atticus. He would be in Jem's room all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

Dialogue

Atticus: Good afternoon, Miss Dubose... My, you look like a picture this afternoon.

Scout: [hiding behind Atticus whispering to Jem and Dill] He don't say a picture of what.

Atticus: Do you know what a compromise is?

Scout: Bendin' the law?

Atticus: Uh, no. It's an agreement reached by mutual consent. Now, here's the way it works. You concede the necessity of goin' to school, we'll keep right on readin' the same every night, just as we always have. Is that a bargain?

Narrator: There just didn't seem to be anyone or anything Atticus couldn't explain. Though it wasn't a talent that would arouse the admiration of any of our friends, Jem and I had to admit he was very good at that, but that was all he was good at, we thought.

Scout: Atticus, do you defend niggers?

Atticus: Don't say "nigger," Scout.

Scout: I didn't say it... Cecil Jacobs did. That's why I had to fight him.

Atticus: Scout, I don't want you fightin'!

Scout: I had to, Atticus, he—

Atticus: I don't care what the reasons are. I forbid you to fight. There are some things that you're not old enough to understand just yet. There's been some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn't do much about defending this man.

Scout: If you shouldn't be defending him, then why are you doing it?

Atticus: For a number of reasons. The main one is that if I didn't, I couldn't hold my head up in town. I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do somethin' again. You're gonna hear some ugly talk about this in school. But I want you to promise me one thing... that you won't get into fights over it, no matter what they say to you.

Taglines

The most beloved and widely read Pulitzer Prize Winner now comes vividly alive on the screen!

If you have read the novel, you will relive every treasured moment. . .If not, a deeply moving experience awaits you

Cast

Gregory Peck - Atticus Finch
Mary Badham - Jean Louise 'Scout' Finch
Phillip Alford - Jeremy 'Jem' Finch
Robert Duvall - Arthur 'Boo' Radley
John Megna - Charles Baker 'Dill' Harris
Frank Overton - Sheriff Heck Tate
Rosemary Murphy - Maudie Atkinson
Ruth White - Mrs. Dubose
Brock Peters - Tom Robinson
Estelle Evans - Calpurnia
Alice Ghostley - Aunt Stephanie Crawford
Paul Fix - Judge Taylor
Collin Wilcox Paxton - Mayella Violet Ewell
James Anderson - Robert E. Lee 'Bob' Ewell
William Windom - Mr. Gilmer, Prosecutor
Kim Stanley - Narrator (Scout as an adult)

Quoternity