Harper Lee Quotes
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Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
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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.
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Where are your pants, son?
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See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl its mortifyin
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Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.
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There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is the court.
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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?
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If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. It's because he wants to stay inside.
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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.
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I shall never marry, Atticus." "Why?" "I might have children.
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Southern lawyers don't read novels much.
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I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.
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I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work.
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Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.
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My book had a universal theme. It's not a "racial" novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization, not necessarily Southern civilization.
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In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one's mind incapable of definite purpose.
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Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.
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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, he is trash.
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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.
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This time we aren't fighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home.
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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 pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.
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Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.
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Mutual defiance made them alike.
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Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.
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Next morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died of fright. My screams brought Atticus from his bathroom half-shaven. "The world's endin', Atticus! Please do something -!" I dragged him to the window and pointed. "No it's not," he said. "It's snowing.
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As a reader I loathe introductions...Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.
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Things are always better in the morning.
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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.
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Summer, and he watches his children's heart break. Autumn again and Boo's children needed him. 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.
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I'm Charles Baker Harris...I can read
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