roleplayermemes
“To Kill a Mockingbird” sentence starters

All sentences are quotes taken directly from Harper Lee’s novel, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. Some sentences are adjusted slightly for the sake of roleplaying.

  • “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
  • “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
  • “I wanted you to see what real courage is.”
  • “People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
  • “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
  • “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”
  • “Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of another.”
  • “–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, he is trash.” 
  • “It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.” 
  • “People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.” 
  • “With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.” 
  • “You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let ‘em get your goat.”
  • “Try fighting with your head for a change.”
  • “Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”  
  • “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”  
  • “Why can’t they get along with each other?”
  • “It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name.”
  • “It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”  
  • “Why do they go out of their way to despise each other?”
  • “____, I think I’m beginning to understand something.”
  • “You can choose your friends but you sure can’t choose your family.”
  • “Pass the damn ham, please.”  
  • “There are just some kind of men…who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one.”
  • “I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.”
  • “It’s not time to worry yet.”
  • “–We had given him nothing, and it made me sad.”  
  • “They’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge them or not.”
  • “It makes you look right silly when you don’t.”  
  • “I didn’t want to bother you none.”
  • “Lord knows what he’s doing or thinking.”
  •  “Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.”
  • “The best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.”
  • “No matter how bitter things get, they’re still our friends and this is still our home.”
  • “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
  • “It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.”
  • “I think that’s an awful good sign, don’t you?”
  • “How long do you think it’ll take?”
  • “This night my mind is filled with Halloween.”
  • “Thus began our longest journey together.”
  • “It’s not my fault you lost your dress.”
  • “I didn’t lose it. Just can’t find it.”
  • “When we stop, I don’t hear it anymore.”
  • “What happened? What happened?”
  • “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
  • “He’s got a bad break.”
  • “Good Lord… I must be losing my memory.”
  • “Well… it would be… sort of like shooting a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”
  • “ Let the dead bury the dead this time,  _____.”
  • “To my way of thinking, taking one man who done you and this town a big service, and dragging him with his shy ways into the limelight - to me that’s a sin.”
  • “I go to school with your boy.”
  • “Cheating a black man is ten times worse than cheating a white.”
  • “You count your blessings and stop complaining.”
  • “There’s a maniac lives there and he’s dangerous…”
  • “I don’t know why I didn’t kill him myself instead of goin’ to the police.”
  • “Come on. I bet they got chains and instruments of torture down there.”
  • “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That’s never possible.”
  • “There goes the meanest man that ever took a breath of life. “
  • “I wonder what he does in there?“
  • “I wonder what he looks like?”
  • “What kinda man are you?”
  • “Listen, no matter what she says to you, don’t answer her back.”
  • “There are some things that you’re not old enough to understand just yet.”
  • “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.”
  • “I’m not a very good man/woman, sir/ma’am.”