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Harper Lee Quotes

Total quotes: 55
“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.”
— Scout, To Kill A Mockingbird
Tagged: Summer, Summer Days, Defining Summer
“Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Tagged: Confederacy, Civil War
“I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Tagged: Failure, Disappointment
“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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“That’s because you can’t hold something in your mind but a little while, said Jem. It’s different with grown folks, we—”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury”
— Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird
Tagged: Atticus Finch
“In the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, To Kill A Mockingbird
Tagged: Banned Books
“Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it, hotheadedness isn't.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, To Kill a Mockingbird
Tagged: Women's Strength
“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 quicker than adults, an evasion simply muddles 'em.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin‘ that way, why do you send me to school?”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dinning-car window with a delight almost physical.”
— Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman: A Novel
Tagged: first lines of books, Atlanta
“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.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“reasonable men, they went because we were there. There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“When the new wore off his grandfather’s watch, and carrying it became a day’s burdensome task, Jem no longer felt the necessity of ascertaining the hour every five minutes.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Tagged: Editing, Writing, How to be a writer
“Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. You’re 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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“From now on it’ll be everybody less one—”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Tagged: Reading, Living, Books
“It's not time to worry yet.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Tagged: worry, Future, Peace
“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. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..."
"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Slowly but surely I began to see the pattern of questions: from questions that Mr.Gilmer did not deem sufficiently irrelevant or immaterial to object to, Atticus was quietly building up before the jury the picture of the Ewell's home life.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
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