Top 100 Harper Lee Quotes
#1. Things are always better in the morning.
Harper Lee
#2. Her victim - of necessity she must put him away from her - he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. What was
Harper Lee
#3. Said once, that the only real duties of government were to prevent crime and preserve contracts, to which I will add one thing since I find myself reluctantly in the twentieth century: and to provide for the common defense.
Harper Lee
#4. She was almost in love with him. No, that's impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren't. Love's the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it's a you-do or you-don't proposition with them all.
Harper Lee
#5. A world she despised, could not comprehend, nor defend herself against. a world that did not want her
Harper Lee
#6. Shoulder up, I reeled around to face Boo Radley and his bloody fangs; instead, I saw Dill ringing the bell with all his might in Atticus's face.
Harper Lee
#7. I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way. Hasn't anybody got any business talkin' like that- it just makes me sick.
Harper Lee
#8. There was no mistaking it, Albert had stuck out his tongue at her. She was pregnant. Jean
Harper Lee
#9. Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another) ... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.
Harper Lee
#10. That's the one thing about here, the South, you've missed. You'd be amazed if you knew how many people are on your side, if side's the right word. You're no special case. The woods are full of people like you, but we need some more of you. She
Harper Lee
#11. There was no doubt about it: Alexandra Finch Hancock was imposing from any angle; her behind was no less uncompromising than her front.
Harper Lee
#12. Herbert Jemson was Methodist of the whole cloth: he was notoriously short on theology and a mile long on good works.
Harper Lee
#13. She had been half willing to sponge out what she had seen and heard, creep back to New York, and make him a memory. A memory of the three of them, Atticus, Jem, and her, when things were uncomplicated and people did not lie.
Harper Lee
#14. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess.
Harper Lee
#15. The warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as we entered the churchyard-Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida, snuff, Hoyt's Cologne, Brown's Mule, peppermint, and lilac talcum.
Harper Lee
#16. I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you're working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn't dream of interrupting on the golf course.
Harper Lee
#17. Don't you oh well me,sir," Miss Maudie replied, recognizing Jem's fatalistic noises, "you are not old enough to appreciate what I said.
Harper Lee
#18. Come to me. When you can't stand it any longer, come to me.
Harper Lee
#19. But at supper that evening after I asked him to pass the damn ham, please, Uncle Jack pointed at me. 'See me afterwards young lady,' he said.
Harper Lee
#20. How could they do it, how could they?'
'I don't know, but they did it.They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do - seems that only children weep
Harper Lee
#21. When we reached the auditorium, the whole town was there except Atticus and the ladies worn out from decorating, and the usual outcasts and shut-ins.
Harper Lee
#22. Everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowing.
Harper Lee
#23. Older Scout: [narrating] Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives.
Harper Lee
#24. Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.
Harper Lee
#25. I thought women liked to be thought strange and mysterious." "No, they just like to look strange and mysterious. When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who's not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel.
Harper Lee
#26. Southern lawyers don't read novels much.
Harper Lee
#27. Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant.
Harper Lee
#28. Every nerve in her body shrieked, then died. She was numb.
Harper Lee
#29. Then Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case.
Harper Lee
#30. Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage
Harper Lee
#31. There was nothing whatever wrong with Mr. Stone, except that he possessed all the necessary qualifications for a certified public accountant: he did not like people, he was quick with numbers, he had no sense of humor, and he was butt-headed.
Harper Lee
#32. Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.
Harper Lee
#33. Atticus - " said Jem bleakly. He turned in the doorway. "What, son?" "How could they do it, how could they?" "I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it - seems that only children weep. Good night." But
Harper Lee
#34. It was a place where, if troubles did not vanish, they were made bearable.
Harper Lee
#35. As I sit here and breathe, I never thought the good God would let me live to see someone walk into the middle of a revolution, pull a lugubrious face, and say, 'What's the matter?
Harper Lee
#36. My objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me. I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse.
Harper Lee
#37. The only way in which all men in America are equal, is in the courtroom - Atticus
Harper Lee
#38. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her
afterwards. - Atticus Finch
Harper Lee
#39. Things are never as bad as they seem.
Harper Lee
#40. 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.- Atticus Finch
RIP Harper Lee
Harper Lee
#41. I proved him a liar but John made him look like a fool. All the time Ewell was on the stand I couldn't dare look at John and keep a straight face. John looked at him as if he were a three-legged chicken or a square egg. Don't tell me judges don't try to prejudice juries.
Harper Lee
#42. She would have pondered over the meaninglessness of silent, austere beauty renewing itself with every sunrise and going ungazed at by half the world.
Harper Lee
#43. You know, many writers really don't like to write. I think this the chief complaint of so many. They hate to write; they do it under the compulsion that makes any artist the victim he is, but they loathe the process of sitting down trying to turn thoughts into reasonable sentences.
Harper Lee
#44. Mr. Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you'd be scared, too.
Harper Lee
#45. Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird wouldn't it?
Harper Lee
#46. Jean Louise Finch always made this journey by air,
Harper Lee
#47. -what are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady!-
Harper Lee
#48. Remember this also: it's always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you'll get along.
Harper Lee
#49. Colored folks don't show their ages so fast," she said. "Maybe
Harper Lee
#50. Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street.
Harper Lee
#51. They said if he'd had two good arms he'd have made it, he was moving that fast. Seventeen bullet holes in him. They didn't have to shoot him that much.
Harper Lee
#52. Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry ...
Harper Lee
#53. cheatin' a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin' a white man
Harper Lee
#54. 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
#56. If she was on the porch when we passed, we would be raked by her wrathful gaze, subjected to ruthless interrogation regarding our behaviour, and given a melancholy prediction on what we would amount to when we grew up, which was always nothing.
Harper Lee
#57. I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him.
Harper Lee
#58. I don't want to hear any words like that while I'm here. Scout, you'll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don't you?'
I said not particularly.
Harper Lee
#59. Besides making change in the collection plate every Sunday, Mr. Avery sat on the porch every night until nine o'clock and sneezed.
Harper Lee
#60. If Dill were here he would leap over the fence to her, bring her head down to his, kiss her, and hold her hand, and together they would take their stand when there was trouble in the house. But Dill had long since gone from her.
Harper Lee
#61. What do you think of Chicago?
Well, the telephone operator woke me up today and said, 'Good morning, Miss Lee. It's eight o'clock, and three below zero.
Harper Lee
#63. You little folks won't tell on me now, will you? It'd ruin my reputation if you did." "You mean all you drink in that sack's Coca-Cola? Just plain Coca-Cola?" "Yes
Harper Lee
#64. 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
#65. Cry about the simple hell people give other people- without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they're people too.
Harper Lee
#66. Dill?"
Mm?"
Why do you reckon Boo Radleys never run off?"
Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.
Maybe he doesn't have anywhere to run off to
Harper Lee
#67. As Kipling said, that's another story...
Harper Lee
#68. There's nothing like a blood-curdling hymn to make you feel at home,
Harper Lee
#69. Against his raising? I'll tell you!" She put her hand to her mouth. When she drew it away, it trailed a long silver thread of saliva. "Your father's no better than the niggers and trash he works for!
Harper Lee
#70. Predict the actions of every conductor from New Orleans to Cincinnati, would
Harper Lee
#71. Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do.
Harper Lee
#72. Lightning rods guarding some graves denoted dead who rested uneasily; stumps of burned-out candles stood at the heads of infant graves. It was a happy cemetery.
Harper Lee
#73. Don't argue with a man, especially when you know you can beat him.
Harper Lee
#74. Jem's not quite thirteen ... no, he's already thirteen - I can't remember. Anyway, it'll come before county court.
Harper Lee
#75. If we followed our feelings all the time, we'd be like cats chasin' their tails.
Harper Lee
#76. When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who's not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel. Stupid, isn't it?
Harper Lee
#77. Our gods are remote from us, Jean Louise. They must never descend to human level." "Is
Harper Lee
#78. Writing is something you'll never learn in any university or at any school. It's something that is within you, and if it isn't there, nothing can put it there.
Harper Lee
#79. Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing 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.
Harper Lee
#80. Well, Dill, after all he's just a Negro." "I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way. Hasn't anybody got any business talkin' like that - it just makes me sick." "That's
Harper Lee
#81. Melbourne said I'll put it in my own words: the time your friends need you is when they're wrong, Jean Louise. They don't need you when they're right - " "What
Harper Lee
#82. If you did not want much, there was plenty.
Harper Lee
#83. I didn't go overseas, but I saw a lot of this country. I didn't have the itch to get back, so after the war I stayed away for ten years, but the longer I stayed away the more I missed Maycomb. I got to the point where I felt like I had to come back or die. You never get it out of your bones.
Harper Lee
#84. To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time.
Harper Lee
#85. You damn morphodite, I'll kill you!
Harper Lee
#86. Atticus, he was real nice."
"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.
Harper Lee
#87. His food doesn't stick going down, does it?
Harper Lee
#88. But I don't get the connection.
Dr. Finch put his hands on the table. 'That's because you haven't looked,' he said. 'You've never opened your eyes.
Harper Lee
#89. I learned more about the poor Mrunas' social life from listening to Mrs. Merriweather: they had so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family.
Harper Lee
#90. The only remedy for this is not to let it beat you.
Harper Lee
#91. Simply by the nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one's mine, I guess.
Harper Lee
#92. There's no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There's no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be.
Harper Lee
#93. There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads - they couldn't be fair if they tried.
Harper Lee
#94. Nothin's real scary except in books.
Harper Lee
#95. Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.
Harper Lee
#96. Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says that the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how to do it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won't you?
Harper Lee
#97. Dill was a villain's villain: he could get into any character part assigned him, and appear tall if height was part of the devilry required.
Harper Lee
#98. I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin' I can do it.
Harper Lee
#99. The cold water embraced hime like no woman ever could
Harper Lee
#100. With her head on his shoulder, Jean Louise was content. It might work after all, she thought. But I am not domestic. I don't even know how to run a cook. What do ladies say to each other when they go visiting? I'd have to wear a hat. I'd drop the babies and kill 'em.
Harper Lee
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top