Harper Lee Quotes

Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.

They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.

Atticus, he was real nice." "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.

I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. Scout

Mutual defiance made them alike.

Let the dead bury the dead.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it.

When you're at the top, there's only one way to go.

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.

Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

You can choose your friends, but you sho' can't choose your family.

That proves something- that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human.

hold your head high and keep those fists down - Atticus Finch

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

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.

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.

Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.

They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

A man can condemn his enemies, but it's wiser to know them.

I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.

But sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down.

Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.

Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.

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.

As a reader I loathe introductions...Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.

Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.

Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful. “How do you know a match don't hurt him?” “Turtles can't feel, stupid,” said Jem. “Where you ever a turtle, huh?

That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?

Southern lawyers don't read novels much.

Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How's your entailment gettin' along?

Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.

Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.

Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

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.

Try fighting with your head for a change... it's a good one, even if it does resist learning.

Nothin’s real scary except in books.

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.

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.

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.

See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl its mortifyin

One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.

You can't really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.

Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry.

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.

When a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains.