Harper Lee Quotes - Page 5

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it.

Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.

Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.

You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.

I don't hafta take his sass

I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again.

As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn't much else for us to learn, except possibly algebra.

Havin' a gun around's an invitation to somebody to shoot you.

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

One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.

Let the dead bury the dead.

Mutual defiance made them alike.

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.

When stalking one’s prey, it is best to take one’s time. Say nothing, and as sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge.

When you're at the top, there's only one way to go.

I had never thought about it, but summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking string, Dill's eyes alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley emerge; summer was the swiftness with which Dill would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longings we sometimes felt each other feel. With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable..." - Scout Finch

When I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly, leaving greasy sweat streaks on the wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his belt. A strange spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails scrape slate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor’s image blurred with my sudden tears. “Hey, Boo,” I said. “Mr. Arthur, honey,” said Atticus, gently correcting me. “Jean Louise, this is Mr. Arthur Radley. I believe he already knows you.

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

You can pet him, Mr. Arthur. He's asleep.

Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean.

"When they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..." His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know--doesn't say much for them, does it?

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake.

There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is the court.

Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do.