Quotes by Harper Lee

“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 - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never...”

“Mockingbirds dont do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They dont eat up peoples gardens, dont nest in corncribs, they dont do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. Thats why its a sin...”

“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 faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles...”

“Everybodys gotta learn, nobodys born knowing.”

“How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwood's 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 tw...”

“Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to.”

“Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit em, but remember its a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“Were so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, weve got men like Atticus to go for us.”

“It had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had been one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing, keeping up with Jem, and besting anyone her own ...”

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

“If we followed our feelings all the time wed be like cats chasin their tails.”

“She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the v...”

“I just know Maycomb. I'm not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I'm certainly aware of it.”

“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.”

“So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process.”

“Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.”

“If we followed our feelings all the time, we'd be like cats chasin' their tails.”

“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 i...”

“Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says that the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how to do it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won'...”

“Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.”