Harper Lee Quotes

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
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
Harper Lee
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
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
That's what I thought, too," he said at last, "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? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. . .it's because he want's to stay inside.
Harper Lee
You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.
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
Autumn was her happiest season. There was an expectancy about its sounds and shapes: the distant thunk pomp of leather and young bodies on the practice field near her house made her think of bands and cold Coca-Colas, parched peanuts and the sight of people's breath in the air. There was even something to look forward to when school started - renewals of old feuds and friendships, weeks of learning again what one half forgot in the long summer. Fall was hot-supper time with everything to eat one missed in the morning when too sleepy to enjoy it.
Harper Lee
There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried.
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
Scout- .. Uncle Jack?"Uncle Jack- "Ma'am?"Scout- "What's a whore-lady?
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
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
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
Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps. And by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy...and no money to buy it with.
Harper Lee
I mean it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days.
Harper Lee
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.
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
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
Miss Gates is a nice lady, ain't she?"Why sure," said Jem. "I liked her when I was in her room."She hates Hitler a lot . . ."What's wrong with that?"Well, she went on today about how bad it was him treating the Jews like that. Jem, it's not right to persecute anybody, is it? I mean have mean thoughts about anybody, even, is it?"Gracious no, Scout. What's eatin' you?"Well, coming out of the courthouse that night Miss Gates was--- she was going' down the steps in front of us, you musta not seen her--- she was talking with Miss Stephanie Crawford. I heard her say it's time somebody time somebody taught 'em a lesson, they were gettin' way above themelves, an' the next thing they think they can do is marry us. Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an' then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home---
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
It ain't time to worry yet. I'll let you know when.
Harper Lee
It's not time to worry yet
Harper Lee
I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin' after you.
Harper Lee
(...) 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 stove wood or a citizens' council.
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
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a court-room, be he any colour of the rainbow, but people have way to carrying their resentments right into a jury box.
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
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
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
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
Atticus, you must be wrong." "How's that?" "Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong. . ." "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
Harper Lee
It was a place where, if troubles did not vanish, they were made bearable.
Harper Lee
Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.
Harper Lee
Let the dead bury the dead...
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
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
In their own way, Tom Robinson's manners were as good as Atticus's
Harper Lee
If he’s not he should be by now. The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets—
Harper Lee
Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?
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
We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe. Some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cupcakes than others; some are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.
Harper Lee
Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was a Graham from Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the state legislature. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was the product of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born, and two years later our mother died from a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that, I knew better than to bother him.
Harper Lee
She was the bravest person I ever knew.
Harper Lee
I wanted you to see something about 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 see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.
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
I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetuated fraud against himself.
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
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. You were an emotional cripple, leaning on him, getting answers from him, assuming that your answers would always be his answers.
Harper Lee
I think there might be a better way,change the law
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
...but before I can live with other folks, I've got to live with myself.The one thing that doesn't abide by mojority rule is a person's conscience.
Harper Lee
...but before I can live with other folks, I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
Harper Lee
Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened 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; but most of all, summer was Dill.
Harper Lee
I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church--was it then I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. 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. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words. But I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow--anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
Harper Lee
As Kipling said, that’s another story...
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
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
We can't always have our druthers.
Harper Lee
...summer was the swiftness with which Dill would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longing we sometimes felt each other feel. With him life was routine; without him life was unbearable.
Harper Lee