Harper Lee Quotes

The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.

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...

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.

If you did not want much, there was plenty.

It's not time to worry yet

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a...

People don’t like to have somebody knowing more than they do. It aggravates them.

What does a bigot do when he meets someone who challenges his opinions? He doesn’t give. He stays rigid. Doesn’t even try to listen, just lashes out.

You damn morphodite, I'll kill you!

Text for today is taken from the twenty-first chapter of Isaiah, verse six: For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

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

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.

People have a habit of doing everyday things even under the oddest conditions.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, 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...

Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.

Don’t talk like that, Dill, said Aunt Alexandra. It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?The way you tell it, it is.

Finders were keepers unless title was proven.

I try to give'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason.

I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. Scout