01UndatedIt had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had been one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing, keeping up with Jem, and besting anyone her own age in any contest requiring physical prowess.Harper Lee / quote ↗
02UndatedShe has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. She persisted, and her subsequent reaction is something that all of us have known at one time or another. She did something every child has done-she tried to put the evidence of her offense away from her. But in this case she was no child hiding stolen contraband: she struck out at her victim-of necessity she must put him away from her-he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense.Harper Lee / quote ↗
03UndatedI just know Maycomb. I'm not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I'm certainly aware of it.Harper Lee / quote ↗
06UndatedWe're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.Harper Lee / quote ↗
07UndatedIf a man says to you, "This is the truth," and you believe him, and you discover what he says is not the truth, you are disappointed and you make sure you will not be caught out by him again. But a man who has lived by the truth-and you have believed in what he has lived-he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing.Harper Lee / quote ↗
08UndatedIf a man says to you, "This is the truth," and you believe him, and you discover what he says is not the truth, you are disappointed and you make sure you will not be caught by him again. But a man who has lived the truth--and you have believed in what he has lived--he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing.Harper Lee / quote ↗
09UndatedI was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.Harper Lee / quote ↗
10UndatedDill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions.Harper Lee / quote ↗
11UndatedThere are just some kind of men 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 ↗
12UndatedI mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Macomb it's like leaving the world.Harper Lee / quote ↗
13UndatedBoo and I walked up the steps to the porch. His fingers found the doorknob. He gently released my hand, opened the door, enter inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again.Harper Lee / quote ↗
14UndatedNo, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks." .... "That's what I thought too," he said at last, "when I was your age. If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time . . . it's because he wants to stay inside.Harper Lee / quote ↗
15UndatedWe came to the street light in the corner, and I wondered how many times Dill stood there hugging the fat pole, watching, waiting, hoping. I wondered how many times Jem and I had made this journey, but I entered the Radley front gate for the seecond time in my life. Boo and I walked up the steps to the porch. His fingers found the doorknob. He gently released my hand, opened the door, enter inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again.Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: w had given him nothing, and it made me sad.Harper Lee / quote ↗
17UndatedThe book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.Harper Lee / quote ↗
18UndatedI need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.Harper Lee / quote ↗
19UndatedThey are simple people, most of them, but that doesn't make them subhuman.You are telling them Jesus loves them, but not much.Harper Lee / quote ↗
20UndatedOne must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.Harper Lee / quote ↗
21UndatedThere is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.Harper Lee / quote ↗
22UndatedThe only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living inHarper Lee / quote ↗
23UndatedThe only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that it's government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living in. The only thing in America that is still unique in this tired world is that a man can go as far as his brains will take him or he can go to hell if he wants to, but it won't be that way much longer.Harper Lee / quote ↗
