Harper Lee

"You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

"Atticus, he was real nice. Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

"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."

"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."

"Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal (...). There is a tendency (...) for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious-because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe-some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others-some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men."

"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."

"“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.”"

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

"Mary Webster was on the blower. Her advance agents saw Hank and me swimming in the middle of the river last night with no clothes on. H'rm, said Atticus. He touched his glasses. I hope you weren't doing the backstroke."

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

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

"You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them."

"Dill was in hearty agreement with this plan of action. Dill was becoming something of a trail anyways, following Jem about... He only grew closer to Jem. (Lee 55)"

"There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried."

"Scout- .. Uncle Jack"Uncle Jack- "Ma'am"Scout- "What's a whore-lady?"

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."