Quotes by Harper Lee
Last Updated: 14 Mar 2025
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.”
“The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
“You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.”
“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.”
“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.”
“Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do.”
“I'm a slow worker; I'm, I think, a steady worker.”
“I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
“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 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.”
“From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries.”
“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.”
“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.”