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Harper Lee -
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
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When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, an evasion simply muddles 'em.
Harper Lee
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As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.
Harper Lee
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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
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I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.
Harper Lee
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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.
Harper Lee
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I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society.
Harper Lee
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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.
Harper Lee
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Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.
Harper Lee
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Just-in-your-own words was Mr. Gilmer's trademark. We often wondered who else's words Mr. Gilmer was afraid his witness might employ.
Harper Lee
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If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. It's because he wants to stay inside.
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For the life of me, I did not understand how he[Atticus] could sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with a Confederate Army relic.
Harper Lee
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We said good-bye, and Dill went inside the house. He evidently remembered he was engaged to me, for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly in front of Jem. "Yawl write, hear?" he bawled after us.
Harper Lee
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There are just some kind of men... who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one.
Harper Lee
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I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work.
Harper Lee
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"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..."
"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."
Harper Lee
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Next morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died of fright. My screams brought Atticus from his bathroom half-shaven. "The world's endin', Atticus! Please do something -!" I dragged him to the window and pointed. "No it's not," he said. "It's snowing.
Harper Lee
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When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
Harper Lee
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I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that's why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.
Harper Lee
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Judge Taylor was on the bench, looking like a sleepy old shark, his pilot fish writing rapidly below in front of him.
Harper Lee
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When stalking one's prey, it is best to take one's time. Say nothing, and as sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge.
Harper Lee
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I could think of nothing else to say to her. In fact I could never think of anything to say to her, and I sat thinking of past painful conversations between us: How are you, Jean Louise? Fine, thank you ma'am, how are you? Very well, thank you; what have you been doing with yourself? Nothin'. Don't you do anything? Nome. Certainly you have friends? Yessum. Well what do you all do? Nothin'.
Harper Lee
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Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
Harper Lee
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Scout, I'm telling you for the last time, shut your trap or go home - I declare to the Lord you're gettin' more like a girl every day! With that, I had no option but to join them.
Harper Lee
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Try fighting with your head for a change... it's a good one, even if it does resist learning.
Harper Lee
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It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you.
Harper Lee
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Quote of the day
Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.
Horace Mann
Harper Lee
Born:
April 28, 1926
Died:
February 19, 2016
(aged 89)
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