Harper Lee

"Outside the courthouse, there was a crowd."

"One does not love breathing."

"Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do."

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

"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom."

"You just mind yourself and let me worry about the rest of the world."

"Atticus was right. One time he said you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view."

"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of another."

"Do the best you can with what you have in the time you have in the place you are."

"I swear by the good Lord above, if I have to spend one more day listening to that Finch woman prattle on."

"There is not a person in this courtroom who has never looked upon another with contempt."

"The truth, simple or complex, is rarely simple."

"When a man's conscience is bothered, there's generally a reason for it."

"If you have to do something, you can do it."

"I wanted you to see what real courage is."

"Books are precious things, but they have drawbacks."

"We're the same bunch of people, just wearing different labels."

"The mind of a writer is a world unto itself."

"You can choose your friends, but you sho' can't choose your family."

"Bad language is a stage all kids go through, and it dies with all reasonable expedience when they learn they're not attracting attention with it."

"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."

"I wanted to give them something to remember that moment in their lives."

"She was the bravest of them all, though she never took a gun to anyone."

"There's no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear."

"I've never deliberately hurt a child, but I have, many times, hurt children in the abstract."

"We accept so much rhetoric without questioning it that we sometimes lose our capacity to recognize the truth."

"The most boring letter in the alphabet: the one you're waiting for."

"One does not lose faith. Sometimes faith loses us."

"Southerners are a curious blend of old-fashioned and modern prejudices."

"If you wish to be a writer, observe the world carefully and write what you see."