American novelist (1926- )
A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishing pole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's.... Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
You see, more than a simple matter of putting down words, 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.
HARPER LEE
interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoints, 1964
Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
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 you see it through no matter what.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
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
To Kill a Mockingbird
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.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view -- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
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, that white man is trash.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.... 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.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
All I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama.
HARPER LEE
interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoints, 1964
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. 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 frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
I didn't expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.
HARPER LEE
interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoints, 1964
I'm not like Thomas Wolfe. I can go home again.
HARPER LEE
interview, Life Magazine, 1961