Harper Lee Quotes & Sayings

I'm Charles Baker Harris...I can read — Harper Lee

I do my best to love everyday — 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

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

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

How do I go about being an enchantress?" Henry warmed to his subject. At thirty, he was an adviser. Maybe because he was a lawyer. "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." She smiled brilliantly and said, "Hank, I agree with everything you've said. You are the most perspicacious individual I've met in years, you are six feet five, and may I light your cigarette? How's that?" "Awful." They were friends again. — Harper Lee

You rarely win, but sometimes you do. — 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

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

Equal rights for all, special privileges for none. — Harper Lee

Autumn was her happiest season. — Harper Lee

I was more at home in my father's world. People like Mr. Heck Tate did not trap you with innocent questions to make fun of you; even Jem was not highly critical unless you said something stupid. Ladies seemed to live in faint horror of men, seemed unwilling to approve wholeheartedly of them. But I liked them. There was something about them, no matter how much they cussed and drank and gambled and chewed; no matter how undelectable they were, there was something about them that I instinctively liked ... they weren't
"Hypocrites, Mrs. Perkins, born hypocrites," Mrs. Merriweather was saying. — Harper Lee

The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think. — Harper Lee

It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike
in the second place, folks don't like to have someone around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates them. Your not gonna change any of them by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language. — 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

No, don't tell me, let me tell you: you had a marvelous time but you wouldn't dream of living there. — 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

Why did you take so much trouble with me today? I know how you hate to move out of that house." "Because you're my child. You and Jem were the children I never had. You two gave me something long ago, and I'm trying to pay my debts. You two helped me a - " "How, sir? — 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

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

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

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

Jesus Christ never went around grumbling and complaining — Harper Lee

She was born in the Objective case. — Harper Lee

Oh dear me, yes. The novel must tell a story. — 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

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

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

Dill, whenever they paused in their pursuits: — Harper Lee

Jean Louise had lost touch with nearly everyone she grew up with and did not wish particularly to rediscover the companions of her adolescence. Her schooldays were her most miserable days, she was unsentimental to the point of callousness about the women's college she had attended, nothing displeased her more than to be set in the middle of a group of people who played Remember Old So-and-So. — 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

[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

She was silent. Time stopped, shifted, and went lazily in reverse. Somehow, then, it was always summer. — Harper Lee

Things are always better in the morning. — 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

It's grown people who always believe the worst — Harper Lee

A world she despised, could not comprehend, nor defend herself against. a world that did not want her — Harper Lee

Hypocrites have just as much right to live in this world as anybody. She — 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

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

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

The law is what he lives by. He'll do his best to prevent someone from beating up somebody else, then he'll turn around and try to stop no less than the Federal Government - just like you, child. You turned and tackled no less than your own tin god - but remember this, he'll always do it by the letter and by the spirit of the law. That's the way he lives. — Harper Lee

We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him. Miss Mauide would yell back, "Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they'll hear you the post office, I haven't heard you yet!" Jem and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady's hand in marriage, but then again Uncle Jack was rather strange. — 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

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

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

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

I ain't cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin' the truth's not cynical, is it?" "The way you tell it, it is. — Harper Lee

On any other day she would have stood barefoot on the wet grass listening to the mockingbirds' early service; she would have pondered over the meaninglessness of silent, austere beauty renewing itself with every sunrise and going ungazed at by half the world. She would have walked beneath yellow-ringed pines rising to a brilliant eastern sky, and her senses would have succumbed to the joy of the morning.
It was waiting to receive her, but she neither looked nor listened. — Harper Lee

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

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

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

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

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

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

We don't write in the first grade, we print. You won't learn to write until you're in the third grade." Calpurnia — Harper Lee

But before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. — Harper Lee

As she welcomed him silently to the human race, the stab of discovery made her tremble a little. — Harper Lee

I reckon if he'd wanted us to know it, he'da told us. If he was proud of it, he'da told us." "Maybe it just slipped his mind," I said. "Naw Scout, it's something you wouldn't understand. Atticus is real old, but I wouldn't care if he couldn't do a blessed thing." ... "Atticus is a gentleman, just like me! — 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

If we followed our feelings all the time, we'd be like cats chasin' their tails. — Harper Lee

It was a happy cemetery. The — Harper Lee

Finders were keepers unless title was proven. — Harper Lee

Jefferson believed full citizenship was a privilege to be earned by each man, that it was not something given lightly nor to be taken lightly. A man couldn't vote simply because he was a man, in Jefferson's eyes. He had to be a responsible man. A vote was, to Jefferson, a precious privilege a man attained for himself in a - a live-and-let-live economy. — 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

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

Jack: Atticus, you've never laid a hand on her.
Atticus: I admit that. So far I've been able to get by with threats. Jack, she minds me as well as she can. Doesn't come up to scratch half the time, but she tries.
Jack: That's not the answer.
Atticus: No, the answer is she knows I know she tries. That's what makes the difference. — Harper Lee

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. — 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

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

Do you really think so? — Harper Lee

Aunty! Jean Louise groaned. Coffees were peculiarly Maycombian in nature. They were given for girls who came home. Such girls were placed on view at 10:30 A.M. for the express purpose of allowing the women of their age who had remained enisled in Maycomb to examine them. Childhood friendships were rarely renewed under such conditions. — Harper Lee

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

Jem, naturally, was Boo: he went under the front steps and shrieked and howled from time to time. — Harper Lee

What was this blight that had come down over the people she loved? Did she see it in stark relief because she had been away from it? Had it percolated gradually through the years until now? Had it always been under her nose for her to see if she had only looked? No, not the last. What turned ordinary men into screaming dirt at the top of their voices, what made her kind of people harden and say "nigger" when the word had never crossed their lips before? — 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

Dill if you don't hush I'll knock you bowlegged. — 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

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

Had she been able to think, Jean Louise might have prevented events to come by considering the day's occurrences in terms of a recurring story as old as time: the chapter which concerned her began two hundred years ago and was played out in a proud society the bloodiest war and harshest peace in modern history could not destroy, returning, to be played out again on private ground in the twilight of civilization no wars and no peace could save. — Harper Lee

Henry," she said primly, "I'll have an affair with you but I won't marry you. — Harper Lee

those children to work while Tom's in jail. If — 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

I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him. — Harper Lee

Asked him and he said he wasn't. Besides, nothin's real scary except on books. — Harper Lee

I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again. — 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

Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. — 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

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

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

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

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

Our gods are remote from us, Jean Louise. They must never descend to human level." "Is — Harper Lee

Mutual defiance made them alike. — 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

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

Hadn't we better go to the livingroom? — 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