The Mockingbird Next Door Quotes

“Nelle clarified her feelings then. As far as she was concerned, Truman lied about people and belittled them as a way of life and he didn’t care whom he hurt. “Truman was a psychopath, honey.” That stopped me short. Nelle used language precisely. She wasn’t just tossing out the word like kids on a playground do, calling one another “psycho.” “You mean in the clinical sense?” I asked. “If I understand the meaning of the term,” she answered. “He thought the rules that apply to everybody else didn’t apply to him.”
― Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee

“You know that African proverb ‘When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground’? When Alice dies,” Tom said, “it will be like a library burning.”
― Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee

“gratitude to Dr. Harper that when Louise’s baby sister was delivered in an upstairs bedroom on Alabama Avenue, the parents gave her the middle name Harper.”
― Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee

“People with depression, anxiety disorders, and other conditions usually went without a diagnosis or treatment.”
― Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee

“With great passion comes temptation. With extraordinary gifts come demons. As disciplined as Alice was in her personal habits and routines, Nelle was a woman of appetites.”
― Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee

“When you have hit the pinnacle, how would you feel about writing more? Would you feel like you’re competing with yourself?”
― Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee

“They could squabble with the best of them, but their pleasure in one another’s company, the way they made their own fun, was obvious.”
― Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee

“A person who tosses and turns on the night before a trip, she explained to me, is journey proud. And I was on a journey. A journey that was entertaining, but that also made me bristle with anxiety.”
― Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee