Top Quotes of Harper Lee
- “Nothin’s real scary except in books.” – Harper Lee
- “Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.” – Harper Lee
- “Writing is simply something you must do. It’s rather like virtue in that it is its own reward.” – Harper Lee
- “Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.” – Harper Lee
Top Quotes of Harper Lee
Harper Lee’s Quotes about Books and Bravery
Children and Empathy Quotes by Harper Lee
Quotes about Fathers by Harper Lee
Quotes on Reading and Integrity by Harper Lee
Son and Talent Quotes of Harper Lee
Harper Lee quotes on Worry and Writing
Harper Lee’s Quotes about Books and Bravery
I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.
Harper Lee
My book had a universal theme. It’s not a “racial” novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization, not necessarily Southern civilization.
Harper Lee
Now…in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
Harper Lee
Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood
Harper Lee
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.
Harper Lee
You’ve really got to start hitting the books because it’s no joke out here.
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.
Harper Lee
Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
Harper Lee
Children and Empathy Quotes by 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
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
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
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When a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains.
Harper Lee
Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?
Harper Lee
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
Harper Lee
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.
Harper Lee
Quotes about Fathers by Harper Lee
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.
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
Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.
Harper Lee
My father is one of the few men I’ve known who has genuine humility, and it lends him a natural dignity. He has absolutely no ego drive, and so he is one of the most beloved men in this part of the state.
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
Quotes on Reading and Integrity by Harper Lee
…but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.
Harper Lee
I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system – that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.
Harper Lee
I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. 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
The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
Harper Lee
I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.
Harper Lee
Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces.
Harper Lee
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
Harper Lee
Son and Talent Quotes of Harper Lee
For the life of me, I did not understand how he[Atticus] could sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with a Confederate Army relic.
Harper Lee
I didn’t know how you were going to do it, but from now on I’ll never worry about what’ll become of you, son, you’ll always have an idea.
Harper Lee
Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry.
Harper Lee
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 would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.
Harper Lee
My objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me. I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse.
Harper Lee
People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.
Harper Lee
Harper Lee quotes on Worry and Writing
It’s not time to worry yet
Harper Lee
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.
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
About your writing with you left hand, are you ambidextrous, Mr. Ewell?” “I most positively am not, I can use one hand good as the other. One hand good as the other.
Harper Lee
Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.
Harper Lee
I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide
Harper Lee
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
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.
Harper Lee