Harper Lee Quotes

I think there might be a better way,change the law

~ 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

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

I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetuated fraud against himself.

~ 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 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

She was the bravest person I ever knew.

~ 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

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

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

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

~ 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

In their own way, Tom Robinson's manners were as good as Atticus's

~ 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

Let the dead bury the dead...

~ Harper Lee

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

~ Harper Lee

It was a place where, if troubles did not vanish, they were made bearable.

~ 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

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

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 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

I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin' after you.

~ Harper Lee

It's not time to worry yet

~ Harper Lee

It ain't time to worry yet. I'll let you know when.

~ 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

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

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

~ Harper Lee

I mean it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days.

~ 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

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

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

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

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

There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried.

~ 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

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

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

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

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

~ Harper Lee