Quotes from Harper Lee

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 it through no matter what.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

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

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 learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.

Atticus, he was real nice." "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.

They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

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.

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.

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 fightin' with your head for a change. -Atticus Finch

It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you.

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 'em.

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.

Things are always better in the morning.

We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.

You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't.

I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. Scout

Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.

Pass the damn ham, please.

It's not time to worry yet

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

The tradition of the South is not urban... I think we are a region of storytellers, naturally, just from our tribal instincts. We did not have the pleasures of the theater or the dance, motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertain each other by talking.

Whatever she says to you, it's your job not to let her make you mad.

I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work.