Top 500 Harper Lee Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “He rarely gathered news; people brought it to him. It was said he made up every edition of The Maycombe Tribune out of his own head and wrote it down on the linotype.”

— Harper Lee

402. “He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem.”

— Harper Lee

403. “I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in my life I thought of running away.”

— Harper Lee

404. “You tell Cecil I’m about as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin.”

— Harper Lee

405. “Stephanie Crawford even told me once she woke up in the middle of the night and found him looking in the window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him? That shut her up for a while.”

— Harper Lee

406. “You deny them hope... You are telling them that Jesus loves them, but not much.”

— Harper Lee

407. “I know what you mean, boy... You aren’t thin-hided, it just makes you sick, doesn’t it?”

— Harper Lee

408. “That her son had developed all the latent characteristics of a three-dollar bill escaped her notice – all she knew was that she was glad he lived in Birmingham because he was oppressively devoted to her, which meant that she felt obliged to make an effort to reciprocate, which she could not with any spontaneity do.”

— Harper Lee

409. “You deny them hope. Any man in this word, Atticus, any man who has a head and arms and legs, was born with hope in his heart.”

— Harper Lee

410. “The son – deceased’s under that tree, doctor, just inside the schoolyard.”

— Harper Lee

411. “Let’s go home, Scout. It’s been a long day. Open the door for me.”

— Harper Lee

412. “There was no finer young man, said the people of Maycomb, than Henry Clinton. Jean Louise agreed.”

— Harper Lee

413. “Pleading’s little more than putting on paper what you want to say.”

— Harper Lee

414. “People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.”

— Harper Lee

415. “To all parties present and participating in the life of the county, however, Alexandra was the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was a disapprover; she was an incurable gossip.”

— Harper Lee

416. “There was nothing whatever wrong with Mr. Stone, except that he possessed all the necessary qualifications for a certified public accountant: he did not like people, he was quick with numbers, he had no sense of humor, and he was butt-headed.”

— Harper Lee

417. “Old Mr. Bob Ewell accused him of rapin’ his girl an’ had him arrested an’ put in jail – ” “Mr.”

— Harper Lee

418. “Atticus – ” said Jem bleakly. He turned in the doorway. “What, son?” “How could they do it, how could they?” “I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it – seems that only children weep. Good night.” But.”

— Harper Lee

419. “Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don’t already know the answer to.”

— Harper Lee

420. “No,” said Atticus, “putting his life’s history on display for the edification of the neighborhood.”

— Harper Lee

421. “She was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave as well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn’t ready to come. Our battles were epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won, mainly because Atticus always took her side. She had been with us ever since Jem was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.”

— Harper Lee

422. “Almost died first year I come to school and et them pecans – folks say he pizened ’em and put ’em over on the school side of the fence.”

— Harper Lee

423. “I wish Bob Ewell wouldn’t chew tobacco.” was all Atticus said about it. According to Miss Stephanie Crawford, however, Atticus was leaving the post office when Mr. Ewell approached him, cursed him, spat on him, and threatened to kill him... Miss Stephanie said Atticus didn’t bat an eye, just took out his handkerchief and wiped his face and stood there and let Mr. Ewell call him names wild horses could not bring her to repeat.”

— Harper Lee

424. “It doesn’t make sense to me. Looks like if Mr. Arthur was hankerin’ after heaven he’d come out on the porch at least. Atticus says God’s loving folks like you love yourself – ” Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. “You are too young to understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of – oh, of your father.” I.”

— Harper Lee

425. “Let’s try to make him come out,” said Dill. “I’d like to see what he looks like.” Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knock on the front door.”

— Harper Lee

426. “They drew up her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Alexandra’s had once been an hourglass figure.”

— Harper Lee

427. “She loved everything that grew in God’s earth, even the weeds. With one exception. If she found a blade of nut-grass in her yard it was like the Second Battle of the Marne: she swooped down upon it with a tin tub and subjected it to blasts from beneath with a poisonous substance she said was so powerful it’d kill us all if we didn’t stand out of the way.”

— Harper Lee

428. “Before Jem looks at anyone else, he looks at me, and I have tried to live so I can look squarely back at him. If I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye, and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him.”

— Harper Lee

429. “Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. “Thank you for my children, Arthur,” he said.”

— Harper Lee

430. “Jem said Mr. Avery misfigured, Dill said he must drink a gallon a day, and the ensuing contest to determine relative distances and respective prowess only made me feel left out again, as I was untalented in this area.”

— Harper Lee

431. “Scout, let’s get us a baby.” “Where?”

— Harper Lee

432. “If I could have explained these things to Miss Caroline, I would have saved myself some inconvenience and Miss Caroline subsequent mortification, but it was beyond my ability to explain things as well as Atticus, so I said, “You’re shamin’ him, Miss Caroline. Walter hasn’t got a quarter at home to bring you, and you can’t use any stovewood.”

— Harper Lee

433. “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.”

— Harper Lee

434. “Atticus said professional people were poor because the farmers were poor. As Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come by for doctors and dentists and lawyers.”

— Harper Lee

435. “She said: “The question, gentlemen – is one of liquor; You ask for guidance – this is my reply: He says, when tipsy, he would thrash and kick her, Let’s make him tipsy, gentlemen, and try!” Alexandra was not amused. She was extremely annoyed.”

— Harper Lee

436. “For reasons unfathomable to the most experienced prophets in Maycomb County, autumn turned to winter that year.”

— Harper Lee

437. “Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does.”

— Harper Lee

438. “I learned more about the poor Mrunas’ social life from listening to Mrs. Merriweather: they had so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family.”

— Harper Lee

439. “The class murmured apprehensively, should she prove to harbor her share of the peculiarities indigenous to that region.”

— Harper Lee

440. “Thanks, but Scout’ll run me down later.” His use of her childhood name crashed on her ears. Don’t you ever call me that again. You who called me Scout are dead and in your grave.”

— Harper Lee

441. “A mob’s always made up of people, no matter what.”

— Harper Lee

442. “You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”

— Harper Lee

443. “Miss Caroline was no more than twenty-one. She had bright auburn hair, pink cheeks, and wore crimson fingernail polish. She also wore high-heeled pumps and a red-and-white-striped dress. She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop. She boarded across the street one door down from us in Miss Maudie Atkinson’s upstairs front room, and when Miss Maudie introduced us to her, Jem was in a haze for days.”

— Harper Lee

444. “I breathed again. It wasn’t me, it was only Calpurnia they were talking about. Revived, I entered the livingroom. Atticus had retreated behind his newspaper and Aunt Alexandra was worrying her embroidery.”

— Harper Lee

445. “Miss Maudie settled her bridgework. “You know old Mr. Radley was a foot-washing Baptist – ” “That’s what you are, ain’t it?” “My shell’s not that hard, child. I’m just a Baptist.”

— Harper Lee

446. “There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.”

— Harper Lee

447. “Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.”

— Harper Lee

448. “Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right;.”

— Harper Lee

449. “Dill’s eyes flickered at Jem, and Jem looked at the floor. Then he rose and broke the remaining code of our childhood. He went out of the room and down the hall. “Atticus,” his voice was distant, “can you come here a minute, sir?”

— Harper Lee

450. “Women like for their men to be masterful and at the same time remote, if you can pull that trick. Make them feel helpless, especially when you know they can pick up a load of light’ud knots with no trouble. Never doubt yourself in front of them, and by no means tell them you don’t understand them.”

— Harper Lee