Top 215 Quotes & Sayings by Harper Lee

Well, they're Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn't dream of interrupting you at golf.

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.

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.

My daddy had a pocket watch that he wore at all times in court. I gave Greg the watch and showed him how Daddy used to use it.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

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.

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.

It was something I never expected to - I never expected the book would sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers.

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.

I'm a slow worker; I'm, I think, a steady worker.

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.

So many writers don't like to write... I like to write, and sometimes I'm afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don't want to leave it. And as a result, I'll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

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

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

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

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.

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

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

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

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

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

From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries.

Things are never as bad as they seem.

Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.

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

Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy... and no money to buy it with.

Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.

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 sin to kill a mockingbird.

Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write.

As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.

I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.

Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it. And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up — some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.

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 fighting with your head for a change...

People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.

People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. Yourself.

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.

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

Things are always better in the morning.

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

It's better to be silent than to be a fool.

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

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

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.

Now...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

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.

Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.

A man can condemn his enemies, but it's wiser to know them.

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.

It's not necessary to tell all you know.

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

To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time.

As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. 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.

Writing is something you'll never learn in any university or at any school. It's something that is within you, and if it isn't there, nothing can put it there.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

You can't really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.