The Best Harper Lee quotes

It ain’t time to worry yet. I’ll let you know when. — Harper Lee

Her world was at its best when her time came to leave it. — Harper Lee

Isn’t it about time you got over that? Bury your dead, Jean Louise. — Harper Lee

By the time I’m ready to get married I’ll be ninety and then it’ll be too late. — Harper Lee

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. — Harper Lee

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems. — Harper Lee

As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons. — Harper Lee

Jem, naturally, was Boo: he went under the front steps and shrieked and howled from time to time. — Harper Lee

T]he time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right — Harper Lee

Time spent indoors was time wasted. — Harper Lee

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. — Harper Lee

I’m no different from any other woman, and the wrong man would turn me into a screamin’ shrew in record time. — Harper Lee

There’s a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it’s dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr Finch. Let the dead bury the dead. — Harper Lee

Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough. — Harper Lee

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

Why, if we followed our feelings all the time we’d be like cats chasin‘ their tails. — Harper Lee

And don’t you fret yourself about anything–why, if we followed our feelings all the time we’d be like cats chasin’ their tails. — Harper Lee

I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time–honored code of our society. — Harper Lee

One time I asked her to have a chew and she said no thanks, that–chewing gum cleaved to her palate and rendered her speechless,’ said Jem carefully. ‘Doesn’t that sound nice? — Harper Lee

As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at home. — Harper Lee

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. — Harper Lee

I do my best to love everyday. — Harper Lee

Love her, but leave her wild. — Harper Lee

Love whom you will but marry your own kind was a dictum amounting to instinct within her. — Harper Lee

One does not love breathing. — Harper Lee

Love’s the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you–do or you–don’t proposition with them all. — Harper Lee

I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. — Harper Lee

They are simple people, most of them, but that doesn’t make them subhuman. You are telling them Jesus loves them, but not much. — Harper Lee

I’m still old–fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. — Harper Lee

Until i feared i would lose it, i never loved to read. one does not love breathing. — Harper Lee

You deny them hope… You are telling them that Jesus loves them, but not much. — Harper Lee

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

It seems to me, that love could be labeled poison and we’d drink it anyways. — Harper Lee

There’s no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There’s no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be. — Harper Lee

He said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up, but it did no good. — Harper Lee

The story of a father’s love for his children, and the love they gave in return. — Charles J. Shields

He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. — Harper Lee

I fall in love everyday, with ideas and sensations, people I see. I hold them long enough to let them go, but I keep them in my heart and in my soul. — Harper Lee

The one thing she liked most about Henry Clinton was that he let her be silent when she wanted to be. She did not have to entertain him. — Harper Lee

Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. — Harper Lee

Atticus, he was real nice.’ ‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them. — Harper Lee

Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in. — Harper Lee

Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers. — Harper Lee

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts. — Harper Lee

Jen and I were accustomed to our father’s last–will–and–testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding. — Harper Lee

Atticus said, ‘I can take anything anybody calls me so long as it’s not true. — Harper Lee

But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said. — Harper Lee

Atticus sometimes said that one way to tell whether a witness was lying or telling the truth was to listen rather than watch. — Harper Lee

But in the secret’s courts of man’s hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed. — Harper Lee

I was proceeding on the dim theory, aside from the innate attractiveness of such words, that if Atticus discovered I had picked them up at school he wouldn’t make me go. — Harper Lee

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 9, spoken by the character Atticus — Harper Lee

Scout, atticus boo : a celebration of 50 years of’ to kill a mockingbird,’ i haven’t spoken to Harper Lee directly about this. and not many people have, except for Harper Lee agent and lawyer. — Harper Lee

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. — Harper Lee

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks. — Harper Lee

Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks. — Harper Lee

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. — Harper Lee

But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. — Harper Lee

Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an‘ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home. — Harper Lee

Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them. — Harper Lee

You folks might be better than the Cunninghams, but it doesn’t count for nothing the way you’re disgracing them. — Harper Lee

Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowing more than they do. — Harper Lee

You got it backwards, Dill,’ said Jem. ‘Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them. — Harper Lee

If you can learn a simple trick, you’ll get along a lot better with all kind of folks. — Harper Lee

I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. — Harper Lee

Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.’ ‘Well, I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. — Harper Lee

I try to give’em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason. — Harper Lee

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. — Harper Lee

We’re the safest folks in the world,’ said Miss Maudie. ‘we’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us. — Harper Lee

About the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people, too. — Harper Lee

They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life. — Harper Lee

Angel–bright, life–in–death; get off the road, don’t suck my breath. — Harper Lee

This was life in the ’30s. This is the way it was with children in the South. I tried to make it general, the kind of things that might happen to any child. — Harper Lee

In favor of southern womanhood as much as anybody, but not for preserving polite fiction at the expense of human life. — Harper Lee

I really can’t tell at this stage, Jack. You know, I’d hoped to get through life without a case of this kind, but John Taylor pointed at me and said, ‘You’re It. — Harper Lee

With him, life was routine, without him, life was unbearable. I stayed miserable for two days. — Harper Lee

So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process. — Harper Lee

I would like to be the chronicler of something that I think is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is small–town, middle–class southern life. — Harper Lee

In that film, the man and the part met. As far as I’m concerned, that part is Greg’s for life. I’ve had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I’ve always refused. — Harper Lee

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

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. — Harper Lee

I shall never marry, Atticus.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I might have children. — Harper Lee

They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again and when they do it––seems that only the children weep. Good night. — Harper Lee

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. — Harper Lee

Don’t talk like that, Dill,’ said Aunt Alexandra. ‘It’s not becoming to a child. It’s–cynical.’ ‘I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?’ ‘The way you tell it, it is. — Harper Lee

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.–Charles Lamb — Harper Lee

Scout: Why are you entrusting us your deepest secret? Mr. Raymond: Because you’re children and you can understand it. — Harper Lee

We Finches don’t marry the children of rednecked white trash. — Harper Lee

It is all fiction, only autobiographical in the sense it is about a small town. None of the incidents in the book ever happened to me as a child. I didn’t have an eventful childhood. — Harper Lee

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. — Harper Lee

Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes. — Harper Lee

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

People who have made peace with themselves are the people I most admire in the world. — Charles J. Shields

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. — Harper Lee

I just don’t like my world disturbed without some warning. — Harper Lee

A world she despised, could not comprehend, nor defend herself against. a world that did not want her — Harper Lee

Mayella Ewell must have been the loneliest person in the world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who had not been out of the house in twenty–five years. — Harper Lee

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

There are just some kind of men…who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one. — Harper Lee

When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who’s not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel. Stupid, isn’t it? — Harper Lee