Mockingbird Quotes - Page 3

• Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.

  Harper Lee

  Winning, Years, Tkam

  Harper Lee (1970). “To Kill a Mockingbird”, p.20, Dramatic Publishing

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• It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike -- in the second place, folks don't like to have someone around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates them. Your 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

  Change, Mouths, Want

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• There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.

  Harper Lee

  Jobs, Father, Men

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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• Summer, and he watches his children's heart break. Autumn again and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

  Harper Lee

  Summer, Children, Heart

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• Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.

  Harper Lee

  Father, Missing, Kill A Mockingbird

  Horton Foote, Harper Lee (1964). “The screenplay of To kill a mockingbird”

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

  Harper Lee

  Real, Nice, People

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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• 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.

  Harper Lee

  Dad, War, Father

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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

  Harper Lee

  Honesty, Powerful, Integrity

  To Kill a Mockingbird ch. 11 (1960)

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• I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

  Harper Lee

  Thinking, Differences, Tkam

  Harold Bloom, Harper Lee (2010). “Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird”, p.44, Infobase Publishing

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• I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.

  Harper Lee

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

  "All I Want To Be Is The Jane Austen Of South Alabama". Interview with Roy Newquist, www.thebluegrassspecial.com.

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• This time we aren't fighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home.

  Harper Lee

  Home, Fighting, Yankees

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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• 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.

  Harper Lee

  Men, Tkam, Squares

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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• I would come, many years later, to understand why To Kill A Mockingbird is considered an important novel, but when I first read it at 11, I was simply absorbed by the way it evoked the mysteries of childhood, of treasures discovered in trees, and games played with an exotic summer friend.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Summer, Games, Years

  "Rereading: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee". www.theguardian.com. July 9, 2010.

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• Naturally, you don't sit down in "white hot inspiration" and write with a burning flame in front of you. But since I knew I could never be happy being anything but a writer, and Mockingbird put itself together for me so accommodatingly, I kept at it because I knew it had to be my first novel, for better or for worse.

  Harper Lee

  Inspiration, Writing, Flames

  "Harper Lee, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' author, dead at 89" by Todd Leopold, www.cnn.com. February 19, 2016.

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• I think I'll be a clown when I get grown.... 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

  Thinking, Tkam, Laughing

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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• I don't think I'll ever lose the feeling that I had when I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - Harper Lee was going back into her childhood. I grew up in a real small town - Lee's was in the South, mine the Northwest - but small towns have a lot in common. There was such a revelation in knowing that a story could be told like that.

  Chris Crutcher

  Real, Thinking, Knowing

  Interview with Jennifer M. Brown, www.publishersweekly.com. Mar 12, 2001.

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• Men, unlike mockingbirds, have the capacity for systematic self-delusion. We echo each other with equal precision, equal eloquence, equal assurance.

  Robert Ardrey

  Men, Echoes, Self

  Robert Ardrey (1966). “The Territorial Imperative”

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• I lived an idyllic 'Huckleberry Finn' life in a tiny town. Climbing trees. Tagging after brothers. Happy. Barefoot on my pony. It was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-esque.

  Sissy Spacek

  Brother, Climbing, Tree

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• I would say what was always on her[Harper Lee] mind was the stories she had to tell, and the story was pretty obvious in "To Kill A Mockingbird," maybe a bit - little bit less obvious and more obscure in "Go Set A Watchman."

  Wayne Flynt

  Mind, Stories, Littles

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• Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had.

  Anna Quindlen

  Inspirational Life, Writing, Wrinkles

  Anna Quindlen (2009). “Being Perfect”, p.36, Random House

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• People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.

  Harper Lee

  Powerful, Pride, Tkam

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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• As a matter of fact, I constantly tell audiences all over the world that the single greatest icon of American culture from the publication of "To Kill A Mockingbird" was that novel so that if we say, what conversation can we have that would lead us on a road of tolerance, and teachers have decided that if you're going to teach values in a school in America, the answer that American teachers at all kinds of schools have come up with, just let Harper Lee teach "To Kill A Mockingbird." And then all the teacher has to do is stand back and guide the discussion.

  Wayne Flynt

  Teacher, School, Icons

  "Harper Lee Remembered As Reclusive". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Linda Wertheimer, www.npr.org. February 20, 2016.

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• Things are always better in the morning.

  Harper Lee

  Morning, Optimistic, Positivity

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• The copies of The Catcher In The Rye or To Kill A Mockingbird that I own look like they were printed yesterday, and there's not a nick, not a blur, there's not any fading on the jacket at all, because they were taken and protected. A limited edition, by nature, is limited, and also probably more protected because of that. I'd rather have a first trade edition than a special one of 25 that was made years later, even if it's signed by the author. The trade edition is the Holy Grail.

  John Larroquette

  Taken, Years, Yesterday

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.

  Harper Lee

  Good Luck, Tkam, Two

  Harold Bloom, Harper Lee (2010). “Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird”, p.36, Infobase Publishing

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