Harper Lee Quotes

106 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... 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
Don't talk like that, Dill, said Aunt Alexandra. It's not becoming to a child. It's – cynical. I ain't cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin' the truth's not cynical, is it? The way you tell it, it is.

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
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
Everybody in Maycomb, it seemed, had a Streak: a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak.

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
"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."
"You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "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
"I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
Your father's right," she said. "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."

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
Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of [another].

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

Harper Lee
Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.

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
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
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
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
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
I am more of a rewriter than a writer. I write at least three drafts. I've been writing since I was a kid of seven, but I have systematically thrown out most of what I have written. It was a form of self-training.

Harper Lee
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?

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
Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean.

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

Harper Lee
Whatever she says to you, it's your job not to let her make you mad.

Harper Lee
People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.

Harper Lee