[about Jem]
Scout: You can pet him, Mr. Arthur. He's asleep. Couldn't if he was awake, though; he wouldn't let you. Go ahead.
Dill Harris: Hey.
Jem: Hey yourself.
Dill Harris: I'm Charles Baker Harris. I can read. I can read anything you've got.
[swinging on the gate]
Dill Harris: Folks call me Dill.
Jem: How old are you? Four and a half?
Dill Harris: Going on seven.
Jem: Well, no wonder then. Scout's been readin' since she was born, and she's not even six yet. You're mighty puny for nearly seven.
Dill Harris: I'm little but I'm old.
Atticus Finch: Do you know what a compromise is?
Scout: Bendin' the law?
Atticus Finch: [slightly bemused] 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?
Scout: Atticus, do you defend niggers?
Atticus Finch: [startled] Don't say 'nigger,' Scout.
Scout: I didn't say it... Cecil Jacobs did; that's why I had to fight him.
Atticus Finch: [sternly] Scout, I don't want you fightin'!
Scout: I had to, Atticus, he...
Atticus
Finch: I don't care what the reasons are: I forbid you to fight.
Older Scout: [narrating] 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.
Older Scout: [narrating] Atticus had promised me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fightin' any more. I was far too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner I learned to hold in, the better off everybody would be. I soon forgot... Cecil Jacobs *made* me forget.
[testifying]
Tom Robinson: Well, I said I best be goin', I couldn't do nothin' for her, an' she said, oh, yes I could. An' I asked her what, and she said to jus' step on the chair yonder an' git that box down from on top of the chifforobe. So I done like she told me, and I was reachin' when the next thing I know she... grabbed me aroun' the legs.
[a murmur erupts in
the courthouse]
Tom Robinson: She scared me so bad I hopped down an' turned the chair over. That was the only thing, only furniture 'sturbed in the room, Mr. Finch, I swear, when I left it... Mr. Finch, I got down off the chair, and I turned around an' she sorta jumped on me. She hugged me aroun' the waist. She reached up an' kissed me on the face. She said she'd never
kissed a grown man before an' she might as well kiss me. She says for me to kiss her back.
[Tom shakes his head, re-living the ordeal with his eyes half-closed]
Tom Robinson: And I said, Miss Mayella, let me outta here, an' I tried to run. Mr. Ewell cussed at her from the window and said he's gonna kill her.
Jem: There goes the meanest man that ever took a breath of life.
Dill Harris: Why is he the meanest man?
Jem: Well, for one thing, he has a boy named Boo that he keeps chained to a bed in the house over yonder. Boo only comes out at night when you're asleep and it's pitch-dark. When you wake up at night, you can hear him. Once I
heard him scratchin' on our screen door, but he was gone by the time Atticus got there.
Dill Harris: I wonder what he does in there? I wonder what he looks like?
Jem: Well, judgin' from his tracks, he's about six and a half feet tall. He eats raw squirrels and all the cats he can catch. There's a long, jagged scar that runs all the way across his
face. His teeth are yella and rotten. His eyes are popped. And he drools most of the time.
Miss Stephanie Crawford: There's a maniac lives there and he's dangerous... I was standing in my yard one day when his Mama come out yelling, 'He's killin' us all.' Turned out that Boo was sitting in the living room cutting up the paper for his scrapbook, and when his daddy come by, he reached over with his scissors, stabbed him in his leg, pulled them out, and went right on
cutting the paper. They wanted to send him to an asylum, but his daddy said no Radley was going to any asylum. So they locked him up in the basement of the courthouse till he nearly died of the damp, and his daddy brought him back home. There he is to this day, sittin' over there with his scissors... Lord knows what he's doin' or thinkin'.
Mayella Ewell: I got somethin' to say. And then I ain't gonna say no more. He took advantage of me. An' if you fine, fancy gentlemen ain't gonna do nothin' about it, then you're just a bunch of lousy, yella, stinkin' cowards, the - the whole bunch of ya, and your fancy airs don't come to nothin'. Your Ma'am'in' and your Miss Mayellarin' - it don't come to nothin', Mr. Finch,
not... no.
Dill Harris: Let's go down to the courthouse and see the room that they locked Boo up in. My aunt says it's bat-infested, and he nearly died from the mildew. Come on. I bet they got chains and instruments of torture down there.