Quotes About Observation

I breathed again. It wasn't me, it was only Calpurnia they were talking about. Revived, I entered the livingroom. Atticus had retreated behind his newspaper and Aunt Alexandra was worrying her embroidery

watching the sky go from yellow to pink as the sun went down, watching flights of martins sweep low over the neighborhood and disappear behind the schoolhouse rooftops.

Atticus raised his eyebrows in warning. He watched his daughter's daemon rise and dominate her: her eyebrows, like his, were lifted, the heavy-lidded eyes beneath them grew round, and one corner of her mouth was raised dangerously. When she looked thus, only God and Robert Browning knew what she was likely to say.

When Dr. Finch pulled at his drink, Jean Louise saw his sharp brown eyes flash above the glass. That's what you tend to forget about him, she thought. He's so busy fidgeting you don't notice how closely he's watching you. He's crazy, all right, like every fox that was ever born. And he knows so much more than foxes. Gracious, I'm drunk.

She saw her old enemy's shoulders relax, and she watched him push his hat to the back of his head. "Let's go home, Scout. It's been a long day. Open the door for me." She stepped aside to let him pass. She followed him to the car and watched him get laboriously into the front seat. As she welcomed him silently to the human race, the stab of discovery made her tremble a little.

Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults

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.

People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for, and they have a right to subject their children to it.

Jem became vaguely articulate: ''d you see him, Scout? 'd you see him just standin' there? … 'n' all of a sudden he just relaxed all over, an' it looked like that gun was a part of him… an' he did it so quick, like… I hafta aim for ten minutes 'fore I can hit somethin

I just know Maycomb. I'm not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I'm certainly aware of it.

Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.

He and Aunty looked alike, but Uncle Jack made better use of his face

It was not always like this, I swear it wasn't. People used to trust each other for some reason, I've forgotten why. They didn't watch each other like hawks then.

Your name's longer'n you are.

If I hear a consonant I look around.

My text for today is taken from the twenty-first chapter of Isaiah, verse six: For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for." ? Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To have your face rolled down over your eyes and not even to notice your blindness. That's dead, I think, as dead as it's possible to be.

I went out the side door, and Sam fell into step behind me as we walked out beyond the mule barn where four mules stood in the lot and on past the cotton house and then down the dim road past a little leaning shack where our tenant farmers lived, a black family in which there was a boy just a year older than I was. His name was Willalee Bookatee. I went on past their house because I knew they would be in the field, too, so there was no use to stop

Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.

I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.

I wonder what ants do on rainy days?

If you never noticed, it never happened.