Harper Lee Quotes

[T]he time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right

I shall never marry, Atticus.Why?I might have children.

Kill a Mockingbird’s small-town setting is what stuck with NBC’s Tom Brokaw, who grew up in small towns throughout South Dakota and knew not just the pressures that [Atticus] was under, but the magnif...

She went to him. Atticus, she said. I’m— You may be sorry, but I’m proud of you. She looked up and saw her father beaming at her. What? I said I’m proud of you. I don’t understand you. I don’t underst...

But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing.

Don’t push her. Let her go at her own speed. Push her and every mule in the county’d be easier to live with.

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.

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 th...

Why doesn’t their flesh creep? How can they devoutly believe everything they hear in church and then say the things they do and listen to the things they hear without throwing up? I thought I was a Ch...

Do you defend niggers, Atticus? I asked him that evening.Of course I do. Don't say nigger, Scout. That's common.'s what everybody at school says.From now on it'll be everybody less one--Well if you do...

I guess it’s like an airplane: they’re the drag and we’re the thrust, together we make the thing fly. Too much of us and we’re nose-heavy, too much of them and we’re tail-heavy—it’s a matter of balanc...