Harper Lee
writer, novelist, musician, screenwriter, poet lawyer, prose writer, actor
Read on Wikipedia1926 – 2016
All Quotes by 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.”
“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.”
“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
“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.”
“As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.”
“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you.”
“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.”
“Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Apparently, Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail.”
“Slowly but surely I began to see the pattern of questions: from questions that Mr.Gilmer did not deem sufficiently irrelevant or immaterial to object to, Atticus was quietly building up before the jury the picture of the Ewell's home life.”
“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.”
“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.”
“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
“In the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.”
“Atticus, he was real nice."”
“Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.”
“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.”
“I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.”
“In that film, the man and the part met. As far as I'm concerned, that part is Greg's for life. I've had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I've always refused.”
“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
“It was something I never expected to - I never expected the book would sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers.”
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.”
“The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
“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.”
“From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries.”
“This was life in the '30s. This is the way it was with children in the South. I tried to make it general, the kind of things that might happen to any child.”
“My daddy had a pocket watch that he wore at all times in court. I gave Greg the watch and showed him how Daddy used to use it.”
“I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.”
“So many writers don't like to write... I like to write, and sometimes I'm afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don't want to leave it. And as a result, I'll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.”
“I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.”
“I would like to be the chronicler of something that I think is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is small-town, middle-class southern life.”
“The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.”
“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
“Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do.”
“You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.”
“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.”
“I'm a slow worker; I'm, I think, a steady worker.”
“It is all fiction, only autobiographical in the sense it is about a small town. None of the incidents in the book ever happened to me as a child. I didn't have an eventful childhood.”
“The tradition of the South is not urban... I think we are a region of storytellers, naturally, just from our tribal instincts. We did not have the pleasures of the theater or the dance, motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertain each other by talking.”
“Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.”