Boo Radley is a misunderstood hero.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee tells the story of Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the deep south during the 1930s who defends a black man accused of rape.
His children, Scout and Jem, are fascinated by their mysterious neighbor Boo Radley. They try to get him out of his house throughout the novel. When he does come out of the house, their opinions of him change.
Here are some quotes from Boo Radley that show how wise and kind he is:
To Kill A Mockingbird Quotes With Page Numbers
Boo Radley Character Analysis
Boo Radley is an intriguing character in the book To Kill A Mockingbird. He is a neighbor of the Finch family known for his reclusive nature and symbolic invisibility.
Boo is shy, innocent, and childlike, with little social interaction. At the story’s beginning, rumors are spread about him, and he is depicted as a frightening man who is completely insane.
However, as the story progresses, the children understand him better and see him as a scared child who has suffered and been locked up in the Radley house.
Boo’s character represents how society views people who are different, and the book teaches us not to be too quick to judge based on appearances and rumors.
Boo Radley Quotes From To Kill A Mockingbird
“Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows. When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work. Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets were found mutilated; although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their initial suspicions.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, about the Radley Place (Scout as narrator), Chapter 1, Page 9
“Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep Boo out of sight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the bed most of the time. Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout as narrator), Chapter 1, Page 12
“Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, about Boo Radley (Scout as narrator), Chapter 1, Page 14
“Arthur Radley just stays in the house, that’s all… Wouldn’t you stay in the house if you didn’t want to come out?”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Miss Maudie about Boo Radley), Chapter 5, Page 49
“I remember Arthur Radley when he was a boy. He always spoke nicely to me, no matter what folks said he did…”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Miss Maudie about Boo Radley), Chapter 5, Page 51
“What Mr. Radley did was his own business. If he wanted to come out, he would.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Atticus Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 5, Page 54
“What Mr. Radley did might seem peculiar to us, but it did not seem peculiar to him.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Atticus Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 5, Page 54
“Shoulder up, I reeled around to face Boo Radley and his bloody fangs; instead, I saw Dill ringing the bell with all his might in Atticus’ face.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch as the narrator about Boo Radley), Chapter 5, Page 54
“As Atticus once advised me to do, I tried to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it: if I had gone alone to the Radley Place at two in the morning, my funeral would have been held the next afternoon.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch as the narrator about Boo Radley), Chapter 7, Page 6
“They’d been sewed up. Not like a lady sewed ’em, like somethin’ I’d try to do. All crooked.’”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Jem Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 7, Page 66
“Someday, maybe, Scout can thank him for covering her up.”
“Thank who?” I asked.
“Boo Radley. You were so busy looking at the fire you didn’t know it when he put the blanket around you.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Atticus and Scout Finch about Boo), Chapter 8, Pages 81, 82
“She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who had not been out of the house in twenty-five years.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Atticus and Scout Finch about Boo), Chapter 19, Page 218
“I think I’m beginning to understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time… it’s because he wants to stay inside.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch as the narrator about Boo Radley), Chapter 23, Page 259
“His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallow, almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his gray eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch as the narrator about Boo Radley), Chapter 29, Page 310
“A strange small spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails scrape slate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor’s image blurred with my sudden tears.”
“Hey, Boo,” I said
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 29, Page 310
”’Mr. Arthur, honey,’ said Atticus, gently correcting me. ‘Jean Louise, this is Mr. Arthur Radley.’”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Atticus Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 30, Page 311
“People have a habit of doing everyday things even under the oddest conditions. I was no exception: “Come along, Mr. Arthur,” I heard myself saying, “you don’t know the house real well. I’ll just take you to the porch, sir.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 30, Page 312
“He looked down at me and nodded. I led him through the hall and past the livingroom. “Won’t you have a seat, Mr. Arthur? This rocking-chair’s nice and comfortable.” My small fantasy about him was alive again: he would be sitting on the porch…right pretty spell we’re having, isn’t it, Mr. Arthur?
Yes, a right pretty spell. Feeling slightly unreal, I led him to the chair farthest from Atticus and Mr. Tate. It was in deep shadow. Boo would feel more comfortable in the dark.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 30, Page 312
“Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. ‘Thank you for my children, Arthur.” he said.’”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Atticus Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 31, Page 317
“Will you take me home?”
He almost whispered it, in the voice of a child afraid of the dark”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 31, Page 319
“Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 31, Page 320
“Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch about Boo Radley), Chapter 31, Page 321
Quotes About Boo Radley Being Misunderstood
“What Mr. Radley did might seem peculiar to us, but it did not seem peculiar to him.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Atticus Finch), Chapter 5, Page 54
“Will you take me home?”
He almost whispered it, in the voice of a child afraid of the dark”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch), Chapter 31, Page 319
“Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch), Chapter 31, Page 321
Quotes About Boo Radley Being A Good Person
“I remember Arthur Radley when he was a boy. He always spoke nicely to me, no matter what folks said he did…”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Miss Maudie), Chapter 5, Page 51
“Someday, maybe, Scout can thank him for covering her up.”
“Thank who?” I asked.
“Boo Radley. You were so busy looking at the fire you didn’t know it when he put the blanket around you.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Atticus and Scout Finch), Chapter 8, Pages 81, 82
“Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. ‘Thank you for my children, Arthur.” he said.’”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Atticus Finch), Chapter 31, Page 317
Boo Radley Rumors Quotes
“Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows. When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work. Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets were found mutilated; although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their initial suspicions.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch), Chapter 1, Page 9
“Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep Boo out of sight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the bed most of the time. Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout as narrator), Chapter 1, Page 12
Boo Radley house quotes
“The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch), Chapter 1, Page 7
“The Radley Place fascinated Dill. In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate. There he would stand, his arm around the fat pole, staring and wondering.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Dill and Scout Finch), Chapter 1, Page 9
“The Radley Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walking south, one faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot. The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard— a “swept” yard that was never swept— where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Dill and Scout Finch), Chapter 1, Page 9
“What’d you see?”
“Nothing. Curtains. There’s a little teeny light way off somewhere, though.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Dill and Scout Finch), Chapter 6, Page 59
Boo Radley Description Quotes
“Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 14
“His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallow, almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his gray eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout Finch as the narrator), Chapter 29, Page 310
Why does Boo Radley not run away?
“Why do you reckon Boo Radley’s never run off?”
Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.
“Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to…”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Dill and Scout Finch), Chapter 14, Page 163
What did Boo put in the tree?
Boo Radley puts various gifts in the knothole of a tree for Jem and Scout, including two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, and a pair of good-luck pennies, as mentioned in the novel.
However, the children never return the favor by giving him anything, which makes the adult narrator Scout feel sad when she looks back on her childhood experience with Boo Radley.
This act of leaving gifts in the tree is one of how Boo Radley evolves from a symbol of superstition and fear to one of goodness and purity, becoming something like a guardian angel.
Does Boo Radley have a scar on his face?
Yes, according to Jem Finch’s description, Boo has a scar on h
“Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Scout as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 14