The voices / 138 fragments

Harper Lee

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Archive entries

01Undated

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.

Harper Lee / quote

02Undated

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.

Harper Lee / quote

03Undated

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 / quote

04Undated

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.

Harper Lee / quote

05Undated

Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.

Harper Lee / quote

06Undated

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

Harper Lee / quote

07Undated

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 / quote

08Undated

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. 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 / quote

09Undated

Naw, Jem. I think that there is just one kind of folks. Folks."Jen turned and punched his pillow. WHen he settle back his face was cloudy. He was going in to one of his declines, and I grew wary. His brows came together; his mouth became a thin line. He was silent for a while. That is what I thought, too," he said at last, "when I was your age. If there is just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go ut of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I am beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley stayed shut up in the house all this time...it's because he wants to stay inside

Harper Lee / quote

10Undated

Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.”“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”“The way you tell it, it is.

Harper Lee / quote

11Undated

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.

Harper Lee / quote

12Undated

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 / quote

13Undated

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 / quote

14Undated

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 / quote

15Undated

Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.

Harper Lee / quote

16Undated

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

Harper Lee / quote

17Undated

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Harper Lee / quote

18Undated

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

Harper Lee / quote

19Undated

How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwood's editorial. Senseless killing--Tom had been given due process of law to the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way. Then Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.

Harper Lee / quote

20Undated

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

Harper Lee / quote

21Undated

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 / quote

22Undated

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

Harper Lee / quote

23Undated

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.

Harper Lee / quote

24Undated

Don't you oh well me,sir," Miss Maudie replied, recognizing Jem's fatalistic noises, "you are not old enough to appreciate what I said.

Harper Lee / quote