Today, I had about four hours to kill waiting for my boyfriend at Libis so I went to the nearby bookstore and chose a book to buy. I wanted something familiar and comforting, and couldn’t decide which one to buy – Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince or Volume 2 of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes collection. I previously owned copies of these books when I was in high school, but I lost them somewhere along the way or lent them out and never got them back. It never bothered me before since I never considered myself a book collector anyway. I usually just borrow books from friends or read them at Powerbooks  – thanks to the genius who allowed people to read the books at the store, sort of like a library; and put in Java Man Cafe as well that serves my favorite pasta with arrabiata sauce.

However, thanks to the influence of both my boyfriend Sidney and my good friend Mike R, I decided it would be nice to have my own personal library, so I guess I should start buying my books now. But anyway, back to the choosing: I put down Sherlock Holmes Volume 2 because I wasn’t sure if they had Volume 1, and I will only buy one volume if I’m sure I can buy the other. After more dilly-dallying, I finally put down The Little Prince because I realized that much as I loved the book, there’s no way it can last me four hours.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in grade 7 or 8 at UP Integrated School (which is equivalent to first or second year high school). I distinctly remember writing “Atticus… Atticus…” in my diary, which was supposed to remind me of my favorite character from the book, Atticus Finch. He was a widowed lawyer who always did what was right, even when it was lonely. The story still haunts me (although I did not cry this time) as it is very difficult for me to imagine that less than a lifetime ago, black people and white people seemed to live in two different worlds, being two different folks. But as Scout said in the book, when her brother Jem told her that he thought there were four different folks in their town, she replied, “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”

Anyway, here are some of my favorite quotations from the book which I highlighted in my copy as well.

SCOUT on reading: Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

ATTICUS to his children: 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.

ATTICUS to his children again, when they got air rifles for Christmas, and as a reference to the title of the novel: I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit `em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

MISS MAUDIE to Scout, trying to explain why Atticus told them that it was a sin to kill mockingbirds: Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

ATTICUS to his children on a drug addict neighbor who died clean though suffering from withdrawal till the end: I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

MISS MAUDIE to Scout, on why Atticus never boasted about his skill in marksmanship: People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.

CALPURNIA (the educated black servant of the Finches) to Scout: It’s not necessary to tell all you know.

ATTICUS to his son Jem, who couldn’t believe that the jury ruled against an obviously innocent black man: 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.

Photo credit: seanelynn