“Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.”

— Harper Lee , book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 2, ch. 25
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Context: In the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.

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Harper Lee 142

American author 1926–2016

Glen Duncan book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

“Apparently, Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 2, ch. 18
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

“To be generous is to say yes before the man even opens his mouth.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

“Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Her mouth was a gash of red, like the torn-open stomach of a sacrifice, bloody and oracular. Behind it her teeth shone sharp and white as bone.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

“This was a thing she’d not seen before, how the meat that fed her was a living being one minute and then violently dead. The smell of it was personal, inescapable, like the scent that rose in the steam from her own self when she stepped into a hot bath. They had broken open the animal’s secret body just to eat it.”

Nalo Hopkinson book Midnight Robber

Section 2 (p. 104)
Midnight Robber (2000)

“Her green eyes fluttered swiftly twice or thrice, then glazed,
her mouth gaped open, bleating, then her jaws hung loose
and retched up all her soul in lumps of clotting blood.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Death of Phida, Book VIII, line 410
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

“She opened her mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn't hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

“Hazel screamed at the top of her lungs, but it was a scream of delight. For the first time in her life-in her two lives-she felt absolutely unstoppable.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Original quote:
For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.
The Extraordinary Cabman, one of many essays collected in Tremendous Trifles (1909)
Misattributed

“Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.”

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Harper Lee 142

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