Harper Lee - People Quotes

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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
I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that's why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.

Harper Lee
In an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

Harper Lee
"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
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

Harper Lee
Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.

Harper Lee
I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.

Harper Lee
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
Somewhere, I had received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could with the sense they had, but Aunt Alexandra was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it was.

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
Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

Harper Lee
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. 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
A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know—doesn't say much for them, does it?

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

Harper Lee
The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets -

Harper Lee