Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Harper Lee, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Harper Lee quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 626 Harper Lee quotes for you to read and share.
Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another) ... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results. -- Harper Lee
No I'm not. It might benefit you to go back and have a look at what some of our founding fathers really believed, instead of relying so much on what people these days tell you they believed. -- Harper Lee
They're ugly, but those are the facts of life. -- Harper Lee
Alexandra had been married for thirty-three years; if it had made any impression on her one way or another, she never showed it. -- Harper Lee
All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. -- Harper Lee
You deny them hope. Any man in this world, Atticus, any man who has a head and arms and legs, was born with hope in his heart. You won't find that in the Constitution, I picked that up in church somewhere. They are simple people, most of them, but that doesn't make them subhuman. -- Harper Lee
I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetuated fraud against himself. -- Harper Lee
but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don't know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit. -- Harper Lee
He looked all Negro to me: he was rich chocolate with flaring nostrils and beautiful teeth. Sometimes he would skip happily , and the Negro woman tugged his hand to make him stop. -- Harper Lee
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. -- Harper Lee
Well, your father and I decided it was time I came to stay with you for a while." "For a while" in Maycomb meant anything from three days to thirty years. Jem and I exchanged glances. "Jem's -- Harper Lee
The thing is, what I'm tryin' to say is -
they do get on a lot better without me, I can't help them any. They ain't mean. They buy me everything I want, but it's now - you've-got-it-go-play-with-it. You've got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it. -- Harper Lee
Conservative resistance to change, that's all, -- Harper Lee
Dr. Buford's profession was medicine and his obsession was anything that grew in the ground, so he stayed poor. -- Harper Lee
I never loved reading until I feared I would lose it. One does not love breathing. -- Harper Lee
Atticus sometimes said that one way to tell whether a witness was lying or telling the truth was to listen rather than watch. -- Harper Lee
Melbourne said I'll put it in my own words: the time your friends need you is when they're wrong, Jean Louise. They don't need you when they're right - " "What -- Harper Lee
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a court-room, be heany colour of the rainbow, but people have way to carrying their resentments right into a jury box. -- Harper Lee
No jury in this part of the world's going to say, "We think you're guilty, but not very," on a charge like that. It was either straight acquittal or nothing. -- Harper Lee
There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire." Atticus -- Harper Lee
I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. -- Harper Lee
But sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down ... -- Harper Lee
Mr. Clinton," he had said, when Henry ventured to inquire about a particularly ambiguous examination, "you may write until doomsday for all I care, but if your answers do not coincide with my answers they are wrong. Wrong, sir. -- Harper Lee
You don't have to learn much out of books, it's like if you want to learn about cows, you go milk one. -- Harper Lee
But she knew that her father's presence at the table with a man who spewed filth from his mouth - did that make it less filthy? No. it condoned. -- Harper Lee
As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal. -- Harper Lee
I think the thing that I most deplore about American writing ... is a lack of craftsmanship. It comes right down to this - the lack of absolute love for language, the lack of sitting down and working a good idea into a gem of an idea. -- Harper Lee
I wondered if anybody had ever called her "ma'am," or "Miss Mayella" in her life; probably not, as she took offense to routine courtesy. What on earth was her life like? I soon found out. -- Harper Lee
I'm no different from any other woman, and the wrong man would turn me into a screamin' shrew in record time. -- Harper Lee
First," he said dispassionately, "hold your tongue. Don't argue with a man, especially when you know you can beat him. Smile a lot. Make him feel big. Tell him how wonderful he is, and wait on him. -- Harper Lee
He was nearly blind in his left eye, and said left eyes were the tribal curse of the Finches. Whenever he wanted to see something well, he turned his head and looked from his right eye. -- Harper Lee
Then Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. -- Harper Lee
Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says that the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how to do it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won't you? -- Harper Lee
I mean it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days. You don't have it yet, but you have a shadow of the beginnings of it. You haven't the humbleness of mind-"
"I thought the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom."
"It's the same thing. Humility. -- Harper Lee
He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem. -- Harper Lee
Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell's shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. -- Harper Lee
People have a habit of doing everyday things even under the oddest conditions. -- Harper Lee
The only reason Henry's like he is now is because your father took him in hand when he was a boy, and because the war came along and paid for his education. Fine a boy as he is, the trash won't wash out of him. -- Harper Lee
I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason anybody in Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored method of sealing oral contracts. Wondering what bargain we had made, I turned to the class for an answer, but the class looked back at me in puzzlement. -- Harper Lee
Jen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding. -- Harper Lee
Scout, if there's ever anything that happens to you or something - you know - something you might not want to tell Atticus about - "
"Huh?"
"You know, if you get in trouble at school or anything
you just let me know. I'll take care of you. -- Harper Lee
Had her conduct been more friendly toward me, I would have felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing. -- Harper Lee
One could be a ray of sunshine in pants as well. -Scout Finch -- Harper Lee
Boo and I walked up the steps to the porch. His fingers found the doorknob. He gently released my hand, opened the door, enter inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again. -- Harper Lee
Scout Finch, juvenile desperado, hellraiser extraordinary. -- Harper Lee
And for goodness' sake put some of the county back where it belongs, the soil erosion's bad enough as it is."
Dill stared at my father's retreating figure.
"He's trying tryin' to be funny," I said. -- Harper Lee
Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. -- Harper Lee
Aunty," she said, cordially, "why don't you go pee in your hat? -- Harper Lee
A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know
doesn't say much for them, does it? -- Harper Lee
So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children. ~To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 16, spoken by the character Atticus -- Harper Lee
You rarely win, but sometimes you do. -- Harper Lee
For the life of me, I did not understand how he[Atticus] could sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with a Confederate Army relic. -- Harper Lee
Atticus
" ... said Jem bleakly. "How could they do it, how could they?"
"I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before & they did it tonight & they'll do it again & when they do it
seems that only children weep. -- Harper Lee
It's like bein' a caterpillar in a cocoon, that's what it is ... Like somethin' asleep wrapped up in a warm place. I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what they seemed like -- Harper Lee
Baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. So don't let Mrs Dubose get you down. She had enough troubles or her own. -- Harper Lee
They drew up her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Alexandra's had once been an hourglass figure. -- Harper Lee
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. -- Harper Lee
It takes considerable getting used to. I hated it for two years. It intimidated me daily until one morning when someone pushed me on a bus and I pushed back. After I pushed back I realized I'd become a part of it. -- Harper Lee
Herbert Jemson was Methodist of the whole cloth: he was notoriously short on theology and a mile long on good works. -- Harper Lee
Most people are nice when you finally see them -- Harper Lee
Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill. -- Harper Lee
Colonel Maycomb's misplaced self-confidence and slender sense of direction brought disaster to all who rode with him in the Creek Indian Wars. -- Harper Lee
I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him. -- Harper Lee
Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful.
"Ain't hateful, just persuades him- 's not like you'd chunk him in the fire," Jem growled.
"How do you know a match don't hurt him?"
"Turtles can't feel , stupid," said Jem.
"Were you ever a turtle, huh? -- Harper Lee
Mayella Ewell must have been the loneliest person in the world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who had not been out of the house in twenty-five years. -- Harper Lee
Summer, and he watches his children's heart break. Autumn again and Boo's children needed him. 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
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
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's face. -- Harper Lee
Miss Maudie settled her bridgework. "You know old Mr. Radley was a foot-washing Baptist - " "That's what you are, ain't it?" "My shell's not that hard, child. I'm just a Baptist." "Don't you all believe in foot-washing?" "We do. At home in the bathtub." "But we can't have communion with you all - -- Harper Lee
leave the place. From the day Mr Radley took Arthur home, people said the house died. But -- Harper Lee
The course of English Literature would have been decidedly different had Mr. Wordsworth owned a power mower, she thought. -- Harper Lee
Atticus, he was real nice."
"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them. -- Harper Lee
As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash -- Harper Lee
But things like long life 'n' good health, 'n' passin' six-weeks tests . . . -- Harper Lee
It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. -- Harper Lee
-That ain't right, Miss Maudie. You're the best lady I know.-
Miss Maudie grinned. thank you ma'am. Thing is, foot-washers think women are a sin by definition. They take the bible literally, you know. -- Harper Lee
Stephanie Crawford even told me once she woke up in the middle of the night and found him looking in the window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him? That shut her up for a while. -- Harper Lee
Miss Maudie's hand closed tightly on mine, and I said nothing. Its warmth was enough. -- Harper Lee
Don't you oh well me,sir," Miss Maudie replied, recognizing Jem's fatalistic noises, "you are not old enough to appreciate what I said. -- Harper Lee
When she dressed, she put on her Maycomb clothes: gray slacks, a black sleeveless blouse, white socks, and loafers. Although it was four hours away, she could hear her aunt's sniff of disapproval." (Chapter 1) -- Harper Lee
Asked him and he said he wasn't. Besides, nothin's real scary except on books. -- Harper Lee
Until comparatively recently in its history, Maycomb County was so cut off from the rest of the nation that some of its citizens, unaware of the South's political predilections over the past ninety years, still voted Republican. -- Harper Lee
There was a time, long ago, when the only peaceful moments of her existence were those from the time she opened her eyes in the morning until she attained full consciousness, a matter of seconds until when finally roused she entered the day's wakeful nightmare. She -- Harper Lee
We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple. -- Harper Lee
Dill if you don't hush I'll knock you bowlegged. -- Harper Lee
I just know Maycomb. I'm not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I'm certainly aware of it. -- Harper Lee
Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006] -- Harper Lee
Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat;it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape. -- Harper Lee
She would have pondered over the meaninglessness of silent, austere beauty renewing itself with every sunrise and going ungazed at by half the world. -- Harper Lee
As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County School system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me. -- Harper Lee
I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird' ... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. -- Harper Lee
Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. -- Harper Lee
Multiplied - the South went through the Reconstruction with only one permanent political change: there was no more slavery. The people became no less than what they were to begin with - in some cases they became horrifyingly more. -- Harper Lee
It seems to me, that love could be labeled poison and we'd drink it anyways. -- Harper Lee
See why you touched it in the first place," Mr. Link Deas was saying. "You've got everything to lose from this, Atticus. I mean everything." "Do you really -- Harper Lee
She wondered how she would behave when her time came to hurt day in and day out. Hardly like Atticus: if you asked him how he was feeling he would tell you, but he never complained; his disposition remained the same, so in order to find out how he was feeling, you had to ask him. -- Harper Lee
it took at least five years to learn law after one left law school: one practiced economy for two years, learned Alabama Pleading for two more, reread the Bible and Shakespeare for the fifth. Then one was fully equipped to hold on under any conditions. "What -- Harper Lee
I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Macomb it's like leaving the world. -- Harper Lee
She was silent. Time stopped, shifted, and went lazily in reverse. Somehow, then, it was always summer. -- Harper Lee
I must have slept a long time, for when I was punched awake the room was dim with the light of the setting moon. "Move over, Scout." "He thought he had to." I mumbled. "Don't stay mad with him." Dill got in bed beside me. "I ain't," he said. "I just wanted to sleep with you. -- Harper Lee
You're gonna see change, you're gonna see Maycomb change its face completely in our lifetime. Your trouble, now, you want to have your cake and eat it: you want to stop the clock, but you can't. -- Harper Lee
She was almost in love with him. No, that's impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren't. Love's the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it's a you-do or you-don't proposition with them all. -- Harper Lee
Predict the actions of every conductor from New Orleans to Cincinnati, would -- Harper Lee
I interrupted to make Uncle Jack let me know when he would pull it out, but he held up a bloody splinter in a pair of tweezers and said he yanked it while I was laughing, that was what was known as relativity. -- Harper Lee
He and Aunty looked alike, but Uncle Jack made better use of his face -- Harper Lee
There you go, wading in your clodhoppers through our private territory. -- Harper Lee
Dill was in hearty agreement with this plan of action. Dill was becoming something of a trail anyways, following Jem about ... He only grew closer to Jem. (Lee 55) -- Harper Lee
Had she insight, could she have pierced the barriers of her highly selective, insular world, she may have discovered that all her life she had been with a visual defect which had gone unnoticed and neglected by herself and by those closest to her: she was born color blind. -- Harper Lee
Dill was a villain's villain: he could get into any character part assigned him, and appear tall if height was part of the devilry required. -- Harper Lee
First thing you learn when you're in a lawin' family is that there ain't any definite answers to anything. -- Harper Lee
It ain't time to worry yet. I'll let you know when. -- Harper Lee
My Lord, Aunt Stephanie, you almost gave me a heart attack! -- Harper Lee
If you can learn a simple trick, you'll get along a lot better with all kind of folks. -- Harper Lee
They had never been able to sustain fifteen minutes' conversation with one another without advancing irreconcilable points of view, invigorating in friendships, but in close blood relations producing only uneasy cordiality. -- Harper Lee
Mary Webster was on the blower. Her advance agents saw Hank and me swimming in the middle of the river last night with no clothes on.
H'rm, said Atticus. He touched his glasses. I hope you weren't doing the backstroke. -- Harper Lee
You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change.
-Atticus Finch -- Harper Lee
Don't matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house's yo' comp'ny, and don't you let me catch you remarkin' on their ways like you was so high and and mighty! Yo' folks might be better'n the Cunninghams but it don't count for nothin' the way you're disgracin' 'em. -- Harper Lee
The man who could not be discourteous to a ground-squirrel had sat in the courthouse abetting the cause of grubby-minded little men. -- Harper Lee
His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor's image blurred with my sudden tears. "Hey, Boo," I said. -- Harper Lee
You'd better take time for 'em, honey, otherwise you'll never grow. You'll be the same at sixty as you are now - then you'll be a case and not my niece. You have a tendency not to give anybody elbow room in your mind for their ideas, no matter how silly you think they are. -- Harper Lee
Jem, she's old and ill. You can't hold her responsible for what she says and does. -- Harper Lee
Said once, that the only real duties of government were to prevent crime and preserve contracts, to which I will add one thing since I find myself reluctantly in the twentieth century: and to provide for the common defense. -- Harper Lee
There's just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to 'em. Even then, they ain't worth the bullet it takes to shoot 'em. -- Harper Lee
I can tell you. In New York you are your own person. You may reach out and embrace all of Manhattan in sweet aloneness, or you can go to hell if you want to. -- Harper Lee
He couldn't see why on earth people lived in that place when they could have a house and a yard for far less down here. -- Harper Lee
Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. -- Harper Lee
Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading. Teach -- Harper Lee
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. -- Harper Lee
The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think. -- Harper Lee
Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. -- Harper Lee
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
-- Harper Lee
I willed myself to stay awake, but the rain was so soft and the room was so warm and his voice was so deep and his knee was so snug that I slept. -- Harper Lee
Door. She knocked and went in. Atticus was in bed reading. "Have a good time?" "I had a won-derful time," she said. "Atticus?" "Hm? -- Harper Lee
He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. -- Harper Lee
Madam, my father has left me flopping like a flounder at low tide and you say what's the matter. -- Harper Lee
Henry," she said primly, "I'll have an affair with you but I won't marry you. -- Harper Lee
weather. As he turned to go, Jean Louise called to him. "Uncle Jack," she said. "What -- Harper Lee
Jem's face showed brief indecision on the ethics of withholding his own dime, but his innate courtesy won and he shifted his dime to his pocket. I did likewise with no qualms. -- Harper Lee
I wonder what would happen if the South had a 'Be Kind to the Niggers Week'? -- Harper Lee
Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes. -- Harper Lee
She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. -- Harper Lee
It was a place where, if troubles did not vanish, they were made bearable. -- Harper Lee
Don't argue with a man, especially when you know you can beat him. -- Harper Lee
There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into, murmured Calpurnia, and she spat meditatively into the yard. We -- Harper Lee
It was Miss Stephanie's pleasure to tell us: this morning Mr. Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on the post office corner, spat in his face, and told him he'd get him if it took the rest of
his life. -- Harper Lee
What do you think of Chicago?
Well, the telephone operator woke me up today and said, 'Good morning, Miss Lee. It's eight o'clock, and three below zero. -- Harper Lee
He declined to let us take our air rifles to the Landing (I had already begun to think of shooting Francis) -- Harper Lee
I thought women liked to be thought strange and mysterious." "No, they just like to look strange and mysterious. When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who's not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel. -- Harper Lee
Her favorite game was golf because its essential principles consisted of a stick, a small ball, and a state of mind. -- Harper Lee
In their own way, Tom Robinson's manners were as good as Atticus's -- Harper Lee
Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him. -- Harper Lee
I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again. -- Harper Lee
I try to give'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason. -- Harper Lee
It's grown people who always believe the worst -- Harper Lee
(When Alabama seceded from the Union on January 11, 1861, Winston County seceded from Alabama, and every child in Maycomb County knew it.) North Alabama was full of Liquor Interests, Big Mules, steel companies, Republicans, professors, and other persons of no background. -- Harper Lee
But before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. -- Harper Lee
Atticus said professional people were poor because the farmers were poor. As Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come by for doctors and dentists and lawyers. -- Harper Lee
Ladies pick funny things to be proud of. -- Harper Lee
You can't really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them. -- Harper Lee
No, I mean I can smell somebody an' tell if they're gonna die. An old lady taught me how. Jean
Louise
Finch, you are going to die in three days. -- Harper Lee
Some folks don't like the way I live. Now I could say the hell with 'em, I don't care if they don't like it. I do say I don't care if they don't like it, right enough - but I don't say the hell with 'em, see? -- Harper Lee
Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How's your entailment gettin' along? -- Harper Lee
I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself. -- Harper Lee
Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up 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." "Miss -- Harper Lee
That's what I thought, too when I was your age. If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? -- Harper Lee
I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man. -- Harper Lee
To kill a mockingbird is a sin -- Harper Lee
How could they do it, how could they?'
'I don't know, but they did it.They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do - seems that only children weep -- Harper Lee
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. -- Harper Lee
Way back about nineteen-twenty there was a Klan ... The Ku Klux's gone ... It'll never come back. -- Harper Lee
She's an old lady and she's ill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it's your job not to let her make you mad. -- Harper Lee
No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her
afterwards. - Atticus Finch -- Harper Lee
I proved him a liar but John made him look like a fool. All the time Ewell was on the stand I couldn't dare look at John and keep a straight face. John looked at him as if he were a three-legged chicken or a square egg. Don't tell me judges don't try to prejudice juries. -- Harper Lee
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. -- Harper Lee
I was furious," she said. She was. She had known it was coming, knew what it would be, had thought she was prepared for it, but when she bought a newspaper on the street corner and read it, she stopped at the first bar she came to and drank down a straight bourbon. "Why? -- Harper Lee
I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way. Hasn't anybody got any business talkin' like that- it just makes me sick. -- Harper Lee
But in the secret's courts of man's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed. -- Harper Lee
See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl its mortifyin -- Harper Lee
Angel-bright, life-in-death; get off the road, don't suck my breath. -- Harper Lee
Writing is something you'll never learn in any university or at any school. It's something that is within you, and if it isn't there, nothing can put it there. -- Harper Lee
That's the one thing about here, the South, you've missed. You'd be amazed if you knew how many people are on your side, if side's the right word. You're no special case. The woods are full of people like you, but we need some more of you. She -- Harper Lee
As I sit here and breathe, I never thought the good God would let me live to see someone walk into the middle of a revolution, pull a lugubrious face, and say, 'What's the matter? -- Harper Lee
Everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowing. -- Harper Lee
You little folks won't tell on me now, will you? It'd ruin my reputation if you did." "You mean all you drink in that sack's Coca-Cola? Just plain Coca-Cola?" "Yes -- Harper Lee
Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. -- Harper Lee
It had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had been one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing, keeping up with Jem, and besting anyone her own age in any contest requiring physical prowess. -- Harper Lee
Anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection -- Harper Lee
Where are your pants, son? -- Harper Lee
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. -- Harper Lee
The Light Brigade sat to the left of her: in their early and middle thirties, they devoted most of their free time to the Amanuensis Club, bridge, and getting one-up on each other in the matter of electrical appliances: -- Harper Lee
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. -- Harper Lee
Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win. -- Harper Lee
Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. -- Harper Lee
There's nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who'll take advantage of a Negro's ignorance. Don't fool yourselves - it's all adding up and one of these days we're going to pay the bill for it. I hope it's not in you children's time. -- Harper Lee
The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that. -- Harper Lee
They don't usually drink on Sunday, they go to church most of the day . -- Harper Lee
Dr. Finch to observe absently and audibly one Sunday: "We asked for bread and they gave us a Stone." [Rev.] Mr. Stone had long been suspected of liberal tendencies. -- Harper Lee
Love whom you will but marry your own kind was a dictum amounting to instinct within her. -- Harper Lee
Well, as a general rule, most women, before they've got 'em, present to their men smiling, agreeing faces. They hide their thoughts. You now, when you're feeling hateful, honey, you are hateful. -- Harper Lee
Thing is, foot-washers think women are a sin in definition. -- Harper Lee
There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal - there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is the court. -- Harper Lee
Against his raising? I'll tell you!" She put her hand to her mouth. When she drew it away, it trailed a long silver thread of saliva. "Your father's no better than the niggers and trash he works for! -- Harper Lee
I lay on my stomach, reached down and poked him. He rolled up. Then, feeling safe, I suppose, he slowly unrolled. He travelled a few inches in his hundred legs and I touched him again. He rolled up. Feeling sleepy, I decided to end things. My hand was going down on him when Jem spoke. -- Harper Lee
Now ... in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. -- Harper Lee
You who called me Scout are dead and in your grave. -- Harper Lee
The southern edge of town. Tim was a liver-colored bird dog, the pet of Maycomb. "What's he doing?" "I don't know, Scout. We better go home. -- Harper Lee
But Cal," Jem protested, "you don't look even near as old as Atticus."
"Colored folks don't show their ages so fast," she said. -- Harper Lee
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. -- Harper Lee
I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.
[Writer's Digest, September 1961] -- Harper Lee
Things are always better in the morning. -- Harper Lee
There was also a phrase for him: pick at random any citizen from Maycomb County and its environs, ask him what he thought of Atticus Finch, and the answer would most likely be, "I never had a better friend." Atticus -- Harper Lee
In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one's mind incapable of definite purpose. -- Harper Lee
It might be because he knows in his heart that very few people in Maycomb really believed his and Mayella's yarns. He thought he'd be a hero, but all he got for his pain was ... was, okay, we'll convict this Negro but get back to your dump. -- Harper Lee
I didn't go overseas, but I saw a lot of this country. I didn't have the itch to get back, so after the war I stayed away for ten years, but the longer I stayed away the more I missed Maycomb. I got to the point where I felt like I had to come back or die. You never get it out of your bones. -- Harper Lee
His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. 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, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. -- Harper Lee
I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I'm still sheriff of Maycomb County, and Bob Ewell fell on his knife. -- Harper Lee
The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They -- Harper Lee
What on earth could Ewell do to me, sister?" "Something furtive," Aunt Alexandra said. "You may count on that." "Nobody has much chance to be furtive in Maycomb," Atticus answered. -- Harper Lee
She looked at Maycomb, and her throat tightened: Maycomb was looking back at her. -- Harper Lee
Didn't you know? Hasn't Atticus gotten around to telling you that? Why, I'm amazed at Zandra not . . . good heavens, I thought all of Maycomb knew that." "Knew what?" "I was in love with your mother." "My mother? -- Harper Lee
Integrity, humor and patience were the three words for Atticus Finch. There was also a phrase for him: pick at random any citizen from Maycomb County and its environs, and ask him what he thought of Atticus Finch, and the answer would most likely be, I never had a better friend. -- Harper Lee
For a while' in Maycomb meant anything from three days to thirty years. -- Harper Lee
I'll never forgive you for what you did to me. You cheated me, you've driven me out of my home and now I'm in a no-man's-land but good - there's no place for me any more in Maycomb, and I'll never be entirely at home anywhere else. Her -- Harper Lee
Atticus took his career in his hands, made good use of a careless indictment, took his stand before a jury, and accomplished what was never before or afterwards done in Maycomb County: he won an acquittal for a colored boy on a rape charge. The chief witness for the prosecution was a white girl. -- Harper Lee
The jail was Maycomb's only conversation piece: its detractors said it looked like a Victorian privy; its supporters said it gave the town a good solid respectable look, and no stranger would ever suspect that it was full of niggers. As -- Harper Lee
There was no finer young man, said the people of Maycomb, than Henry Clinton. Jean Louise agreed. -- Harper Lee
Below her, on rough benches, sat not only most of the trash in Maycomb County, but the county's most respectable men. -- Harper Lee
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, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with -- Harper Lee
While" in Maycomb meant anything from three days to thirty years. Jem and I exchanged glances. "Jem's growing -- Harper Lee
The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. -- Harper Lee
He said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up, but it did no good. -- Harper Lee
Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts. -- Harper Lee
In favor of southern womanhood as much as anybody, but not for preserving polite fiction at the expense of human life. -- Harper Lee
Of course he shouldn't, but he'll never change his ways. Are you going to take out your disapproval on his children? -- Harper Lee
Next morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died of fright. My screams brought Atticus from his bathroom half-shaven.
"The world's endin', Atticus! Please do something -!" I dragged him to the window and pointed.
"No it's not," he said. "It's snowing. -- Harper Lee
The apple does not fall far from the tree. -- Harper Lee
If you did not want much, there was plenty. -- Harper Lee
You'll get your head shot off, Jem. -- Harper Lee
Atticus, are we going to win it?" "No, honey." "Then, why - " "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win," Atticus said. -- Harper Lee
Blind, that's what I am. I never opened my eyes. I never thought to look into people's hearts, I looked only in their faces. -- Harper Lee
She had two minutes of peace before yesterday returned: nothing can kill the pleasure of one's first cigarette on a new morning. Jean Louise blew smoke carefully into the still air. She -- Harper Lee
We're all of us going to hell, it's just a question of time. -- Harper Lee
Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum. -- Harper Lee
No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change -- Harper Lee
These top-water nigger preachers . . . like apes . . . mouths like Number 2 cans . . . twist the Gospel . . . the court prefers to listen to Communists . . . take 'em all out and shoot 'em for treason . . . Against -- Harper Lee
You know, many writers really don't like to write. I think this the chief complaint of so many. They hate to write; they do it under the compulsion that makes any artist the victim he is, but they loathe the process of sitting down trying to turn thoughts into reasonable sentences. -- Harper Lee
[S]ome men who cheat their wives out of grocery money wouldn't think of cheating the grocer. Men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes, Jean Louise. They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways. -- Harper Lee
We Finches don't marry the children of rednecked white trash. -- Harper Lee
Had Alexandra ever pressed Jean Louise's vulnerable points with awareness, she could have added another scalp to her belt, but after years of tactical study Jean Louise knew her enemy. Although she could rout her, Jean Louise had not yet learned how to repair the enemy's damage. -- Harper Lee
I do wish this time you'd try to dress better while you're home. Folks in town get the wrong impression of you. They think you are
ah
slumming. -- Harper Lee
And so they went, down the row of laughing women, around the diningroom, refilling coffee cups, dishing out goodies as though their only regret was the temporary domestic disaster of losing Calpurnia. -- Harper Lee
Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. -- Harper Lee
Her victim - of necessity she must put him away from her - he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. What was -- Harper Lee
Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food. -- Harper Lee
I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. -- Harper Lee
the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; -- Harper Lee
The Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; -- Harper Lee
Sometimes it's better to bend the law a little in special cases. -- Harper Lee
Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it. -- Harper Lee
As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons. -- Harper Lee
Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean. -- Harper Lee
Remember this also: it's always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you'll get along. -- Harper Lee
Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers. -- Harper Lee
She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl. -- Harper Lee
About your writing with you left hand, are you ambidextrous, Mr. Ewell?"
"I most positively am not, I can use one hand good as the other. One hand good as the other. -- Harper Lee
There's no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There's no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be. -- Harper Lee
I found myself wondering what life would be if Jem were different, even from what he was now; what I would do if Atticus did not feel the necessity of my presence, help and advice. Why, he couldn't get along a day without me. Even Calpurnia couldn't get along unless I was there. They needed me. -- Harper Lee
Jem's not quite thirteen ... no, he's already thirteen - I can't remember. Anyway, it'll come before county court. -- Harper Lee
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. -- Harper Lee
the Times is so wrapped up in its duty to posterity it bores you to death. -- Harper Lee
The only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living in. -- Harper Lee
The cold water embraced hime like no woman ever could -- Harper Lee
Colored folks don't show their ages so fast," she said. "Maybe -- Harper Lee
My memory stirred. -- Harper Lee
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. -- Harper Lee
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. -- Harper Lee
Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand. -- Harper Lee
Jean Louise had a sinking feeling. The Hundred Years' War had progressed to approximately its twenty-sixth year with no indications of anything more than periods of uneasy truce. -- Harper Lee
[T]he time your friends need you is when they're wrong, Jean Louise. They don't need you when they're right -- Harper Lee
yard where the trees were, where the carhouse was, and -- Harper Lee
Mutual defiance made them alike. -- Harper Lee
Cynical, hell. I'm a healthy old man with a constitutional mistrust of paternalism and government in large doses. -- Harper Lee
The gum looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelled all right. I licked it and waited for a while. When I did not die, I crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley's Double Mint. -- Harper Lee
When stalking one's prey, it is best to take one's time. Say nothing, and as sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge. -- Harper Lee
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. -- Harper Lee
I'm Charles Baker Harris, he said, and I can read. -- Harper Lee
Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; -- Harper Lee
I don't hafta take his sass -- Harper Lee
Jem was twelve. He was difficult to live with, inconsistent, moody. His appetite was appalling, and he told me so many times to stop pestering him I consulted Atticus: "Reckon he's got tapeworm" Atticus said no, Jem was growing. I must be patient with him and disturb him as little as possible. -- Harper Lee
Hypocrites have just as much right to live in this world as anybody. She -- Harper Lee
Jean Louise grinned. Her father said it took at least five years to learn law after one left law school: one practiced economy for two years, learned Alabama Pleading for two more, reread the Bible and Shakespeare for the fifth. Then one was fully equipped to hold on under any conditions. -- Harper Lee
Alexandra was one of those people who had gone through life at no cost to themselves; had she been obliged to pay any emotional bills during her earthly life, Jean Louise could imagine her stopping at the check-in desk in heaven and demanding a refund. -- Harper Lee
Jean Louise, did you come down on the train Like That? -- Harper Lee
He always told his daughter the rest of it, quietly and solemnly, but Jean Louise sometimes thought she detected an unmistakably profane glint in Atticus Finch's eyes, or was it merely the light hitting his glasses? She never knew. -- Harper Lee
We have to do a lot of things we don't want to do, Jean Louise." She blazed. "What kind of answer is that? -- Harper Lee
Every man's island, Jean Louise, every man's watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious. -- Harper Lee
Our gods are remote from us, Jean Louise. They must never descend to human level." "Is -- Harper Lee
Atticus had owned an old canvas-top touring car, and once when he was taking Jem, Henry, and Jean Louise swimming, the car rolled over a particularly bad hump in the road and deposited Jem without. -- Harper Lee
With her head on his shoulder, Jean Louise was content. It might work after all, she thought. But I am not domestic. I don't even know how to run a cook. What do ladies say to each other when they go visiting? I'd have to wear a hat. I'd drop the babies and kill 'em. -- Harper Lee
Isn't it about time you got over that? Bury your dead, Jean Louise. -- Harper Lee
While offering to the Lord the results of Mr. Cowper's hallucination, or declaring it was Love that lifted her, Jean Louise shared the warmness that prevails among diverse individuals who find themselves in the same boat for one hour each week. -- Harper Lee
Jean Louise, when a man's looking down the double barrel of a shotgun, he picks up the first weapon he can find to defend himself, be it a stone or a stick of stovewood or a citizens' council." "That -- Harper Lee
Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'. -- Harper Lee
Jean Louise Finch always made this journey by air, -- Harper Lee
They said later that Mrs. Merriweather was putting her all into the grand finale, that she had crooned, "Po-ork," with a confidence born of pine trees and butterbeans entering on cue. She waited a few seconds, then called, "Po-ork?" When nothing materialized, she yelled, "Pork! -- Harper Lee
I learned more about the poor Mrunas' social life from listening to Mrs. Merriweather: they had so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family. -- Harper Lee
He's freed himself from every stigma, but he sits nursing his hangover of hatred ... . -- Harper Lee
There's some folks who don't eat like us," she whispered fiercely, "but you ain't called on to contradict 'em at the table when they don't. That boy's yo' comp'ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear? -- Harper Lee
Sometimes we have to kill a little so we can live. -- Harper Lee
Around the house to get in, but he run out the front door just ahead of me. I sawed who he was, all right. I was too distracted about Mayella to run after'im. I run in the house and she was lyin' on the floor squallin' - " "Then what did you -- Harper Lee
she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. -- Harper Lee
You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't. -- Harper Lee
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. -- Harper Lee
He was out of his mind," said Atticus. "Don't like to contradict you, Mr. Finch - wasn't crazy - mean as hell. Low-down skunk with enough liquor in him to make him brave enough to kill children. He'd never have met you face to face. -- Harper Lee
You are too young to understand it," she said, "but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of - oh, of your father. -- Harper Lee
She wondered why she had never thought her country beautiful. -- Harper Lee
Amazing grace how sweet thuh sound That saved a wretch like me; I once was lost but now I'm found, Was blind, but now I see. A-men." Jem -- Harper Lee
Dill?"
Mm?"
Why do you reckon Boo Radleys 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
Try fighting with your head for a change ...
it's a good one, even if it does resist learning. -- Harper Lee
There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads - they couldn't be fair if they tried. -- Harper Lee
Older Scout: [narrating] Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives. -- Harper Lee
It seems quixotic today, with jet airplanes and overdoses of Nembutal, that a man would go through a war for something so insignificant as his state. -- Harper Lee
When she looked thus, only God and Robert Browning knew what she was likely to say. -- Harper Lee
Jem, I ain't ever heard of a nigger snowman, I said. -- Harper Lee
I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you're working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn't dream of interrupting on the golf course. -- Harper Lee
I shall never marry, Atticus."
"Why?"
"I might have children. -- Harper Lee
Conceived in mistrust, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created evil. -- Harper Lee
I just don't like my world disturbed without some warning. -- Harper Lee
There was no doubt about it: Alexandra Finch Hancock was imposing from any angle; her behind was no less uncompromising than her front. -- Harper Lee
Apparently Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail. -- Harper Lee
This case is as simple as black and white -- Harper Lee
Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. -- Harper Lee
Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about? -- Harper Lee
Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. -- Harper Lee
Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen. -- Harper Lee
My objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me. I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse. -- Harper Lee
When Henry handed her a cup of punch she whispered,
"If you want to go on with the seniors or anything I'll be alright."
Henry smiled at her. "You're my date, Scout. -- Harper Lee
Why doesn't their flesh creep? How can they devoutly believe everything they hear in church and then say the things they do and listen to the things they hear without throwing up? -- Harper Lee
She had been half willing to sponge out what she had seen and heard, creep back to New York, and make him a memory. A memory of the three of them, Atticus, Jem, and her, when things were uncomplicated and people did not lie. -- Harper Lee
People in their right minds never take pride in their talents. -- Harper Lee
It's quite a thing, if you've never been in or known a small southern town. The people are not particularly sophisticated, naturally. They're not worldly wise in any way. But they tell you a story whenever they see you. -- Harper Lee
There was nothing whatever wrong with Mr. Stone, except that he possessed all the necessary qualifications for a certified public accountant: he did not like people, he was quick with numbers, he had no sense of humor, and he was butt-headed. -- Harper Lee
She was easy to look at and easy to be with most of the time, but she was in no sense of the word an easy person. She was afflicted with a restlessness of spirit he could not guess at, but he knew she was the one for him. -- Harper Lee
Seven o'clock and all's well," said Atticus. "You've been swearing at your aunt." "I have not." "She told me you had." "I was crude, but I didn't cuss her. -- Harper Lee
There are ways of doing things you dont't know about -- Harper Lee
Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are. -- Harper Lee
They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it
seems that only the children weep. Good night. -- Harper Lee
An old campaigner, he did not speak until we were on the sidewalk. "What's up?" "Jem's got the look-arounds," an affliction Calpurnia said all boys caught at his age. -- Harper Lee
sometimes. . . . She slowed -- Harper Lee
I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody... -- Harper Lee
There was no doubt about it, I must soon enter this world, where on its surface fragrant ladies rocked slowly, fanned gently, and drank cool water. -- Harper Lee
Courage is when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. -- Harper Lee
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 see it through no matter what.
- Atticus Finch -- Harper Lee
We're so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we've got men like Atticus to go for us. -- Harper Lee
Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing 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. -- Harper Lee
Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them." "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. -- Harper Lee
- but you know they're still doing it. Stoppin' 'em just made 'em go underground. Bill says he wouldn't be surprised if there was another Nat Turner Uprisin', we're sittin' on a keg of dynamite and we just might as well be ready, Hester said. -- Harper Lee
You said, in effect, 'I don't like the way these people do, so I have no time for them.' You'd better take time for 'em, honey, otherwise you'll never grow. -- Harper Lee
Well, they're Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn't dream of interrupting you at golf. -- Harper Lee
Don't worry, though, he'll be as good as
new. Boys his age bounce. -- Harper Lee
When you're at the top, there's only one way to go. -- Harper Lee
She had cool green eyes and jet hair, a quick smile, and was the type of girl Jem fell for with monotonous regularity. -- Harper Lee
Mr. Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you'd be scared, too. -- Harper Lee
She had never told us on, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives. She was our friend. -- Harper Lee
Scout: Why are you entrusting us your deepest secret?
Mr. Raymond: Because you're children and you can understand it. -- Harper Lee
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. Somebody walked over my grave, she thought, probably Jem on some idiotic errand. -- Harper Lee
Had I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains that seem to obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there. -- Harper Lee
When a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. -- Harper Lee
There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them. -- Harper Lee
deaf. Unruffled by Herbert Jemson's breach of allegiance, because he had not heard it, Mr. Stone rose and walked to the pulpit with Bible in hand. He opened it and said, "My text for today is taken from the twenty-first -- Harper Lee
But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said. -- Harper Lee
The class murmured apprehensively, should she prove to harbor her share of the peculiarities indigenous to that region. -- Harper Lee
A jury's vote's supposed to be secret. Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant." "Tom's -- Harper Lee
Scout- .. Uncle Jack?"
Uncle Jack- "Ma'am?"
Scout- "What's a whore-lady? -- Harper Lee
The warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as we entered the churchyard-Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida, snuff, Hoyt's Cologne, Brown's Mule, peppermint, and lilac talcum. -- Harper Lee
Lawyers, I suppose were once children, too -- Harper Lee
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another they are Communists. -- Harper Lee
She was born in the Objective case. -- Harper Lee
Atticus's wisdom; he was growing old and he wanted to die safe in the knowledge that his daughter could fend for herself. -- Harper Lee
People don't like to have somebody knowing more than they do. It aggravates them. -- Harper Lee
After all, if Aunty could be a lady at a time like this, so could I. -- Harper Lee
First of all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. 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. -- Harper Lee
The one human being she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted had failed her; the only man she had ever known to whom she could point and say with expert knowledge, "He is a gentleman, in his heart he is a gentleman," had betrayed her, publicly, grossly, and shamelessly. -- Harper Lee
Havin' a gun around's an invitation to somebody to shoot you. -- Harper Lee
You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live. -- Harper Lee
My book had a universal theme. It's not a "racial" novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization, not necessarily Southern civilization. -- Harper Lee
I'll never worry about what'll become of you, son, you'll always have an idea. Jem's -- Harper Lee
Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself ... It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent. -- Harper Lee
Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant. -- Harper Lee
As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man's heart, and a man's failings - I'll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes 'em like all of us. -- Harper Lee
I think there might be a better way,change the law -- Harper Lee
They're real strong magic, they make you have good luck. Not like fried chicken when you're not lookin' for it, but things like long life n' good health, n' passin' six weeks tests ... these are real valuable to somebody. -- Harper Lee
Don't push her. Let her go at her own speed. Push her and every mule in the county'd be easier to live with. -- Harper Lee
You aren't thin-hided, it just makes you sick, doesn't it? -- Harper Lee
All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbours was that, if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white. -- Harper Lee
Well, Dill, after all he's just a Negro." "I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way. Hasn't anybody got any business talkin' like that - it just makes me sick." "That's -- Harper Lee
When we reached the auditorium, the whole town was there except Atticus and the ladies worn out from decorating, and the usual outcasts and shut-ins. -- Harper Lee
It's alive!" she screamed. The -- Harper Lee
Her world was at its best when her time came to leave it. -- Harper Lee
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? -- Harper Lee
This time we aren't fighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home. -- Harper Lee
The people became no less than what they were to begin with - in some cases they became horrifyingly more. They were never destroyed. They were ground into the dirt and up they popped. -- Harper Lee
Don't you study about other folks's business till you take care of your own. -- Harper Lee
But in the absence of eye-witness there's always a doubt, sometimes only the shadow of a doubt. The law says 'reasonable doubt', but I think a defendant's entitled to the shadow of doubt. There's always the possibility, no matter how improbable, that he's innocent. -- Harper Lee
under the live oaks on the square. Attentive critics of courthouse business, Atticus said -- Harper Lee
Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry ... -- Harper Lee
I don't want to hear any words like that while I'm here. Scout, you'll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don't you?'
I said not particularly. -- Harper Lee
Took her old place in the corner of the front row, -- Harper Lee
There was no mistaking it, Albert had stuck out his tongue at her. She was pregnant. Jean -- Harper Lee
I said, you and Jem were very special to me - you were my dream-children, but as Kipling said, that's another story . . . call on me tomorrow, and you'll find me a grave man. -- Harper Lee
Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do. -- Harper Lee
Finders were keepers unless title was proven. -- Harper Lee
He is an incredible man, she thought. A chapter of his life comes to a close, Atticus tears down the old house and builds a new one in a new section of town. I couldn't do it. They built an ice cream parlor where the old one was. Wonder who runs it? -- Harper Lee
She touched yesterday cautiously, -- Harper Lee
Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.' Jem -- Harper Lee
It was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: -- Harper Lee
He was prodding her. Let him. They were on safe ground. "Well, in trying to satisfy one amendment, it looks like they rubbed out another one. The Tenth. It's only a small amendment, only one sentence long, but it seemed to be the one that meant the most, somehow. -- Harper Lee
What does a bigot do when he meets someone who challenges his opinions? He doesn't give. He stays rigid. Doesn't even try to listen, just lashes out. -- Harper Lee
I do my best to love everybody -- Harper Lee
The music instructor. He taught a course in what was wrong with Southern church music. He was from New Jersey, said Herbert. -- Harper Lee
I guess it's like an airplane: they're the drag and we're the thrust, together we make the thing fly. -- Harper Lee
Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood, -- Harper Lee
Let's go home, Scout. It's been a long day. Open the door for me. -- Harper Lee
You never went to school and you do all right, so I'll just stay home too. You can teach me like Grandaddy taught you 'n' Uncle Jack." "No -- Harper Lee
If we followed our feelings all the time, we'd be like cats chasin' their tails. -- Harper Lee
Atticus said, I can take anything anybody calls me so long as it's not true. -- Harper Lee
You are fascinated with yourself. You will say anything that occurs to you, but what I can't understand are the things that do occur to you. I should like to take your head apart, put a fact in it, and watch it go its way through the runnels of your brain until it comes out of your mouth. -- Harper Lee
If Dill were here he would leap over the fence to her, bring her head down to his, kiss her, and hold her hand, and together they would take their stand when there was trouble in the house. But Dill had long since gone from her. -- Harper Lee
Perspicacious individual I've met in years, you are -- Harper Lee
When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who's not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel. Stupid, isn't it? -- Harper Lee
The one thing she liked most about Henry Clinton was that he let her be silent when she wanted to be. She did not have to entertain him. -- Harper Lee
You better go warn your younger friends that if they want to preserve Our Way of Life, it begins at home. It doesn't begin with the schools or the churches or anyplace but home. -- Harper Lee
The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets
-- Harper Lee
You can pet him, Mr. Arthur. He's asleep... -- Harper Lee
They're people, aren't they? We were quite willing to import them when they made money for us. -- Harper Lee
I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a
woman to do that kind of work. -- Harper Lee
He won an acquittal for a colored boy on a rape charge. -- Harper Lee
With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable. -- Harper Lee
The Lord never sends you more than you can bear - -- Harper Lee
The poetry was so ahead of its time no one has deciphered it yet -- Harper Lee
They are simple people, most of them, but that doesn't make them subhuman.
You are telling them Jesus loves them, but not much. -- Harper Lee
He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning. -- Harper Lee
Well, in the first place, you stopped to gimme a chance to tell you my side of it- you just lit right into me. When Jem an' I fuss Atticus doesn't ever listen to just Jem's side of it, he hears mine too -- Harper Lee
I didn't know how you were going to do it, but from now on I'll never worry about what'll become of you, son, you'll always have an idea. -- Harper Lee
Nothin's real scary except in books. -- Harper Lee
Hold your head high and keep those fists down - Atticus Finch -- Harper Lee
Equal rights for all, special privileges for none. -- Harper Lee
I heard something once. I heard a slogan and it stuck in my head. I heard 'Equal rights for all; special privileges for none' and to me it didn't mean anything but what it said. -- Harper Lee
Recorded history's version does not coincide with the truth, but these are the facts, because they were passed down by word of mouth through the years, and every Maycombian knows them. -- Harper Lee
I guess when you're hurt your first instinct's to hurt back. -- Harper Lee
Old Mr. Bob Ewell accused him of rapin' his girl an' had him arrested an' put in jail - " "Mr. -- Harper Lee
As a reader I loathe introductions ... Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity. -- Harper Lee
Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies - Scout -- Harper Lee
It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. -- Harper Lee
Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in. -- Harper Lee
I don't see why I have to when he doesn't.
Then listen. -- Harper Lee
There's nothing like a blood-curdling hymn to make you feel at home, -- Harper Lee
There was no point in saying you were sorry if you aren't. -- Harper Lee
Atticus - " said Jem bleakly. He turned in the doorway. "What, son?" "How could they do it, how could they?" "I don't know, but they did it. 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. Good night." But -- Harper Lee
They said if he'd had two good arms he'd have made it, he was moving that fast. Seventeen bullet holes in him. They didn't have to shoot him that much. -- Harper Lee
Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another. -- Harper Lee
Dr. Finch looked up. You're making a bad mistake if you think your daddy's dedicated to keeping the Negroes in their places. -- Harper Lee
I can't beat you, I can't join you. -- Harper Lee
Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. -- Harper Lee
Besides, nothin's real scary except in books." Atticus -- Harper Lee
When I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn't supposed to be doing things that required pants. -- Harper Lee
The dark tower. Childe Roland to the dark tower came. -- Harper Lee
To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time. -- Harper Lee
She sat there in front of me and she didn't see me, she saw white folks. -- Harper Lee
They fought to preserve their identity. Their political identity, their personal identity. Dr. -- Harper Lee
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 -- Harper Lee
Education than most coloured folks. When she squinted -- Harper Lee
I do my best to love everyday -- Harper Lee
You won't find better people than in New York. -- Harper Lee
But a man who has lived by truth - and you have believed in what he has lived - he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I'm nearly out of my mind. -- Harper Lee
Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again. -- Harper Lee
Don't you understand that?" "I understand that you're a goddamned hypocrite." "I -- Harper Lee
... some people have more opportunity because they're born with it ... -- Harper Lee
Every nerve in her body shrieked, then died. She was numb. -- Harper Lee
Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal. -- Harper Lee
those children to work while Tom's in jail. If -- Harper Lee
By the time I'm ready to get married I'll be ninety and then it'll be too late. -- Harper Lee
Her father said it took at least five years to learn law after one left law school: one practiced economy for two years, learned Alabama Pleading for two more, reread the Bible and Shakespeare for the fifth. -- Harper Lee
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." Jean -- Harper Lee
Lightning rods guarding some graves denoted dead who rested uneasily; stumps of burned-out candles stood at the heads of infant graves. It was a happy cemetery. -- Harper Lee
The same families married the same families until relationships were hopelessly entangled and the members of the community looked monotonously alike. -- Harper Lee
Hadn't we better go to the livingroom? -- Harper Lee
You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. -- Harper Lee
You're no better. You're no damn better. You just try to kill their souls instead of their bodies. -- Harper Lee
children get to bed now. -- Harper Lee
He's the same in the court-room as he is on the public streets. -- Harper Lee
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for. -- Harper Lee
That proves something- that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. -- Harper Lee
Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write. -- Harper Lee
Southern lawyers don't read novels much. -- Harper Lee
The novel must tell a story. -- Harper Lee
In Alabama can't - ?" I was indignant. "I do. I guess it's to protect our frail ladies from sordid cases like Tom's. Besides," Atticus grinned, "I doubt if we'd ever get a complete case tried - the -- Harper Lee
Do you really think so? -- Harper Lee
You know rape's a capital offense in Alabama," said Atticus. "Yessir, -- Harper Lee
I was proceeding on the dim theory, aside from the innate attractiveness of such words, that if Atticus discovered I had picked them up at school he wouldn't make me go. -- Harper Lee
The white supremacists are really pretty smart. If they can't scare us with the essential inferiority line, they'll wrap it in a miasma of sex, because that's the only thing they know is feared in our fundamentalist hearts down here. -- Harper Lee
Mr. Tate. He's good and dead. He won't hurt these children again. -- Harper Lee
There are just some kind of men ... who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one. -- Harper Lee
She is the last of her kind, she thought. No wars had ever touched her, and she had lived through three; nothing had disturbed that world of hers, where gentlemen smoked on the porch or in hammocks, where ladies fanned themselves gently and drank cool water. -- Harper Lee
The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that's something I'll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I'd rather it be me than that houseful of children out there. -- Harper Lee
Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. -- Harper Lee
I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society. -- Harper Lee
That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear? -- Harper Lee
Dear goodness, the things you learned. -- Harper Lee
A world she despised, could not comprehend, nor defend herself against. a world that did not want her -- Harper Lee
No, don't tell me, let me tell you: you had a marvelous time but you wouldn't dream of living there. -- Harper Lee
My father is one of the few men I've known who has genuine humility, and it lends him a natural dignity. He has absolutely no ego drive, and so he is one of the most beloved men in this part of the state. -- Harper Lee
Somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. So don't let Mrs. Dubose -- Harper Lee
What do you want me to do, go shout from the housetops that I am Henry Clinton and I'm here to tell you you're all wet? -- Harper Lee
Keep calm and consult Jack, -- Harper Lee
We generally get the juries we deserve. -- Harper Lee
For years and years all that man thought he had that made him any better than his black brothers was the color of his skin. He was just as dirty, he smelled just as bad, he was just as poor. -- Harper Lee
That Tom had a good chance of going free, or at least of having a new trial. -- Harper Lee
I ain't cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin' the truth's not cynical, is it?" "The way you tell it, it is. -- Harper Lee
The only thing in America that is still unique in this tired world is that a man can go as far as his brains will take him or he can go to hell if he wants to, -- Harper Lee
Autumn was her happiest season. -- Harper Lee
Jem also told me that if I breathed a word to Atticus, if in any way I let Atticus know I knew, Jem would personally never speak to me again. -- Harper Lee
Pointed dramatically upward. "Look," he said. "Look, all of -- Harper Lee
Cry about what, Mr. Raymond?" Dill's maleness was beginning to assert itself. "Cry about the simple hell people give other people - without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they're people, too." "Atticus -- Harper Lee
Somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. -- Harper Lee
Atticus is a gentleman, just like me! -- Harper Lee
One time I asked her to have a chew and she said no thanks, that - chewing gum cleaved to her palate and rendered her speechless," said Jem carefully. "Doesn't that sound nice? -- Harper Lee
Oh dear me, yes. The novel must tell a story. -- Harper Lee
Jem, naturally, was Boo: he went under the front steps and shrieked and howled from time to time. -- Harper Lee
A man can appear to be a part of something not-so-good on its face, but don't take it upon yourself to judge him unless you know his motives as well. -- Harper Lee
It's not time to worry yet -- Harper Lee
We can't always have our druthers. -- Harper Lee
Her - 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 -- Harper Lee
every man's watchman, is his conscience. -- Harper Lee
Folks were doin' a lot of runnin' that night -- Harper Lee
Dill, whenever they paused in their pursuits: -- Harper Lee
Let's try to make him come out," said Dill. "I'd like to see what he looks like." Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knock on the front door. -- Harper Lee
I'm little but I'm old. -- Harper Lee
Let the dead bury the dead. -- Harper Lee
Go away, the old buildings said. There is no place for you here. You are not wanted. We have secrets. -- Harper Lee
Jesus Christ never went around grumbling and complaining -- Harper Lee
Pass the damn ham, please. -- Harper Lee
Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street. -- Harper Lee
I don't know, but they did it. 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. Good night. -- Harper Lee
From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries. -- Harper Lee
The only way in which all men in America are equal, is in the courtroom - Atticus -- Harper Lee
It was a happy cemetery. The -- Harper Lee
That's what everybody wants to do when they love like that. They want to get married, they want to kiss and hug and carry on and have babies all the time. -- Harper Lee
You may be sorry, but I'm proud of you." She looked up and saw her father beaming at her. "What?" "I said I'm proud of you." "I -- Harper Lee
She followed him into a dark parlor to which clung the musky sweet smell of clean Negro, snuff, and Hearts of Love hairdressing. Several shadowy forms rose when she entered. -- Harper Lee
Good God, girl!" shouted her uncle. "It was an army of individuals! They walked off their farms and walked to the War! -- Harper Lee
His food doesn't stick going down, does it? -- Harper Lee
Good grief, baby, people don't agree with the Klan, but they certainly don't try to prevent them from puttin' on sheets and making fools of themselves in public. -- Harper Lee
cheatin' a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin' a white man -- Harper Lee
Nearly never kills a bird -- Harper Lee
But at supper that evening after I asked him to pass the damn ham, please, Uncle Jack pointed at me. 'See me afterwards young lady,' he said. -- Harper Lee
When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em. -- Harper Lee
-what are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady!- -- Harper Lee
There's a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it's dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr Finch. Let the dead bury the dead. -- Harper Lee
There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible. -- Harper Lee
It takes two races to mongrelize a race - if that's the right word - and when we white people holler about mongrelizin', isn't that something of a reflection on ourselves as a race? -- Harper Lee
I wanted you see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. -- Harper Lee
I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference. -- Harper Lee
I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to. -- Harper Lee
Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel. -- Harper Lee
... something's wrong with me, it's something about me. It has to be because all these people cannot have changed. -- Harper Lee
Aunty said no, that's where we got our small hands and feet. -- Harper Lee
Hold your head down and keep those fists down. -- Harper Lee
Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. -- Harper Lee