You never really understand a person until you consider things from hi — Harper Lee

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

"Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Boards activities, and what Ive heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read. Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink."

"Its never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesnt hurt you."

"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."

"Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. 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."

"When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But dont make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, an evasion simply muddles em."