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Harper Lee Quotes
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I am more of a rewriter than a writer. I write at least three drafts. I've been writing since I was a kid of seven, but I have systematically thrown out most of what I have written. It was a form of self-training.
Harper Lee
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Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful. How do you know a match don't hurt him? Turtles can't feel, stupid, said Jem. Where you ever a turtle, huh?
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She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.
Harper Lee
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Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean.
Harper Lee
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I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. Scout
Harper Lee
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In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one's mind incapable of definite purpose.
Harper Lee
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Don't talk like that, Dill, said Aunt Alexandra. It's not becoming to a child. It's – cynical. I ain't cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin' the truth's not cynical, is it? The way you tell it, it is.
Harper Lee
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Havin' a gun around's an invitation to somebody to shoot you.
Harper Lee
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I try to give'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason.
Harper Lee
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We're so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we've got men like Atticus to go for us.
Harper Lee
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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. 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.
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I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin' I can do it.
Harper Lee
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Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained - if you ate animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.
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Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.
Harper Lee
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Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.
Harper Lee
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Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps. And by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy...and no money to buy it with.
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Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.
Harper Lee
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There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible.
Harper Lee
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A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know—doesn't say much for them, does it?
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Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.
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Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry…
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I didn't know how you were going to do it, but from now on I'll never worry about what'll become of you, son, you'll always have an idea.
Harper Lee
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People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.
Harper Lee
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Whatever she says to you, it's your job not to let her make you mad.
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As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn't much else for us to learn, except possibly algebra.
Harper Lee
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Quote of the day
Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned.
Ignazio Silone
Harper Lee
Born:
April 28, 1926
Died:
February 19, 2016
(aged 89)
Bio:
Nelle Harper Lee is an American novelist widely known for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature.
Known for:
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
Go Set a Watchman (2015)
To Kill a Mockingbird: A Study Guide (1983)
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