Quotes About Childhood

I look upon those who assure me they had a 'happy childhood' as either pathological liars, or pariahs.

Do you defend niggers, Atticus? I asked him that evening. Of course I do. Don't say nigger, Scout. That's common. 's what everybody at school says. From now on it'll be everybody less one-- Well if you don't want me to grow up talkin' that way, why do you send me to school?

Turtles don't feel, stupid, said Jem. Were you ever a turtle, huh?

I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that's why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.

We said good-bye, and Dill went inside the house. He evidently remembered he was engaged to me, for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly in front of Jem. Yawl write, hear? he bawled after us.

Jem, I ain't ever heard of a nigger snowman, I said.

He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of gray house with sad brown doors.

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.

Miss Caroline seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogs from the time they were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature.

Dill if you don't hush I'll knock you bowlegged.

Yeah, that's all, said Dill. He'll probably come out after you when he sees you in the yard, then Scout'n' me'll jump on him and hold him down till we can tell him we ain't gonna hurt him.

Atticus killed several birds with one stone when he read to his children, and would probably have caused a child psychologist considerable dismay: he read to Jem and Jean Louise whatever he happened to be reading, and the children grew up possessed of an obscure erudition. They cut their back teeth on military history, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, True Detective Mysteries, The Code of Alabama, the Bible, and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.

Dill Büyünce palyaço olaca??m, dedi. Jem ve ben bakakald?k. Evvet! Palyaço. Ä°nsanlara gülmenin d???nda bir ÅŸey yapm?yorum. Onun için bir sirke girip kat?lana dek güleceÄŸim. Sen ÅŸa??rm??s?n Dill, dedi Jem. Palyaçolar üzgündür. Ä°nsanlar onlara güler.

If she was on the porch when we passed, we would be raked by her wrathful gaze, subjected to ruthless interrogation regarding our behaviour, and given a melancholy prediction on what we would amount to when we grew up, which was always nothing.

When it was time to play Boo's big scene, Jem would sneak into the house, steal the scissors from the sewingmachine drawer when Calpurnia's back was turned, then sit in the swing and cut up newspapers. Dill would walk by, cough at Jem, and Jem would fake a plunge into Dill's thigh. From where I stood it looked real.

Jem scooped up an armful of dirt, patted it into a mound on which he added another load, and another until he had constructed a torso. Jem, I ain't never heard of a nigger snowman, I said.

Jem, naturally, was Boo: he went under the front steps and shrieked and howled from time to time.

I think I'll be a clown when I get grown,' said Dill. Jem and I stopped in our tracks. 'Yes sir, a clown,' he said. '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.

I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow—anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.

Little Chuck grinned broadly. "There ain't no need to fear a cootie, ma'am. Ain't you ever seen one? Now don't you be afraid, you just go back to your desk and teach us some more.

When Atticus came home to dinner he found me crouched down aiming across the street. "What are you shooting at?" "Miss Maudie's rear end." Atticus turned and saw my generous target bending over her bushes. He pushed his hat to the back of his head and crossed the street. "Maudie," he called, "I thought I'd better warn you. You're in considerable peril.

What made you think of Dill?" she asked. "I don't know. Just thought of him." "You never liked him, did you?" Henry smiled. "I was jealous of him. He had you and Jem to himself all summer long, while I had to go home the day school was out. There was nobody at home to fool around with.

It's not becoming to a child. It's—cynical.