Harper Lee

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken

at the elbow.

Atticus had urged them to accept the state’s generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives,

Atticus practiced economy more than anything;

There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with,

Atticus, Jem and I,

our mother died from a sudden heart attack

“Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It’s best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I’ll take over from here and try to undo the damage—”

resisted arrest by Maycomb’s ancient beadle, Mr. Conner, and locked him in the courthouse outhouse.

Jem said he “bought cotton,” a polite term for doing nothing

mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers.