Quotes from Harper Lee

Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful. Ain't hateful, just persuades him- 's not like you'd chunk him in the fire, Jem growled. How do you know a match don't hurt him? Turtles can't feel , stupid, said Jem. Were you ever a turtle, huh?

So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children. ~To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 16, spoken by the character Atticus

Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.

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

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies.

Do you defend niggers, Atticus? I asked him that evening. Of course I do. Don't say nigger, Scout. That's common. 's what everybody at school says. From now on it'll be everybody less one-- Well if you don't want me to grow up talkin' that way, why do you send me to school?

I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.

Turtles don't feel, stupid, said Jem. Were you ever a turtle, huh?

I never loved reading until I feared I would lose it. One does not love breathing.

I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it--seems that only children weep.

You deny them hope. Any man in this world, Atticus, any man who has a head and arms and legs, was born with hope in his heart. You won't find that in the Constitution, I picked that up in church somewhere. They are simple people, most of them, but that doesn't make them subhuman.

Sometimes we have to kill a little so we can live.

I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.

The only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living in.

Remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Don't you study about other folks's business till you take care of your own.

Scout, I´m telling you for the last time, shut your trap or go home - I declare to the Lord you´re gettin´ more like a girl every day!" With that, I had no option but to join them.

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

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

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 hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes 'em like all of us.

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

Autumn was her happiest season.

I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.

Nothin's real scary except in books.