Harper Lee Quotes - Page 3

You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change...

...but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself.

But sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down.

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

There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.

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.

My objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me. I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse.

When a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains.

There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy... and no money to buy it with.

As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.

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

Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.

...in other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama Interview - March 1964

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.

I do my best to love everybody

Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry.

Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.

I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn't realized it (the original book) had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.

Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.

He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

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.

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.