Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Harper Lee
Harper Lee Quotes
106 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
And it's certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don't know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit. Of course he shouldn't, but he'll never change his ways. Are you going to take out your disapproval on his children?
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change. -Atticus Finch
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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. Do it, and you'll often get an answer you don't want, an answer that might wreck your case.
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Everybody in Maycomb, it seemed, had a Streak: a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak.
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
"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
Source
Report...
"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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of [another].
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
But sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down...
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.
Harper Lee
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
1
2
3
4
5
Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Harper Lee
Born:
April 28, 1926
Died:
February 19, 2016
(aged 89)
Bio:
Nelle Harper Lee is an American novelist widely known for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature.
Known for:
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
Go Set a Watchman (2015)
To Kill a Mockingbird: A Study Guide (1983)
Most used words:
atticus
jem
man
people
folks
children
time
dill
life
scout
kind
read
court
jury
head
Harper Lee on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Harper Lee Quotes
Harper Lee Short Quotes
American Author Quotes
Author Quotes
20th-century Author Quotes
20th-century Women
Women Authors
Related People
Truman Capote
American Author
Gregory Peck
American Actor
J. D. Salinger
American Novelist
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes