Quotes by Harper Lee

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.

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 - whore so busy worrying about the next world theyve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.

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 sin to kill a mockingbird.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But dont make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles em.

Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.

Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you dont already know the answer to.

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

You deny them hope... You are telling them that Jesus loves them, but not much.

How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwoods editorial. Senseless killing--Tom had been given due process of law to the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way. Then Mr. Underwoods meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of mens hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...Its a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal (...). There is a tendency (...) for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious-because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe-some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because theyre born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others-some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.

Dont you oh well me,sir, Miss Maudie replied, recognizing Jems fatalistic noises, you are not old enough to appreciate what I said.

Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.

Something is wrong with me, its something about me. it has to be me because all those people cannot have changed.

He was letting you break your icons one by one. he was letting you reduce him to the status of a human being.

In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe ones mind incapable of definite purpose.

I think theres just one kind of folks. Folks.

First of all, he said, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, youll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. 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.