Quotes from Harper Lee

Well, Indian-heads—well, they come from the Indians. They're real strong magic, they make you have good luck.

pero a veces la Biblia en manos de un hombre determinado es peor que una botella de whisky en las de..., oh, de tu padre. Me

If you did not want much, there was plenty. Keeping a nigger happy these days is like catering to a king. In New York you are your own person. You may reach out and embrace all of Manhattan in sweet aloneness, or you can go to hell if you want to.

It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike—in the second place, folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates 'em. You're not gonna change any of them by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.

Maycomb's usual disease. Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand …

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Yes. I'll accept being called a snob when it comes to government. I'd like very much to be left alone to manage my own affairs in a live-and-let-live economy, I'd like for my state to be left alone to keep house without advice from the NAACP, which knows next to nothing about its business and cares less. That organization has stirred up more trouble in the past five years—

A few graves in the cemetery were marked with crumbling tombstones; newer ones were outlined with brightly colored glass and broken Coca-Cola bottles

Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.

the Times is so wrapped up in its duty to posterity it bores you to death.

I remember that rape case you defended, but I missed the point. You love justice, all right. Abstract justice written down item by item on a brief—nothing to do with that black boy, you just like a neat brief. His cause interfered with your orderly mind, and you had to work order out of disorder. It's a compulsion with you, and now it's coming home to you—

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.

Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case.

Jean Louise, when a man's looking down the double barrel of a shotgun, he picks up the first weapon he can find to defend himself, be it a stone or a stick of stovewood or a citizens' council.

couldn't be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins. They're ugly, but those are the facts of life." "Doesn't make it right," said Jem stolidly. He beat his fist softly on his knee. "You just can't convict a man on evidence like that—you can't." "You couldn't, but they could and did.

all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.

He was prodding her. Let him. They were on safe ground. "Well, in trying to satisfy one amendment, it looks like they rubbed out another one. The Tenth. It's only a small amendment, only one sentence long, but it seemed to be the one that meant the most, somehow.

She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody.

When you happened along and saw him doing something that seemed to you to be the very antithesis of his conscience-your conscience-you literally could not stand it. It made you physically ill. Life became hell on earth for you. You had to kill yourself, or he had to kill you to get you functioning as a separate entity.

Your father is right, she said. 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 sing to kill a mockingbird.

a gang of wild animals can be stopped,simply because they're still human.

he couldn't see why on earth people lived in that place when they could have a house and a yard for far less down here.

Mr. Fred shook hands with her, said he was glad to see her, drew out a wet Coke from the machine, wiped it on his apron, and gave it to her. This is one good thing about life that never changes, she thought. As long as he lived, as long as she returned, Mr. Fred would be here with his...simple welcome. What was that? Alice? Brer Rabbit? It was Mole. Mole, when he returned from some long journey, desperately tired, had found the familiar waiting for him with its simple welcome.