Harper Lee
Novelist
1926-04-28 – 2016-02-19
Harper Lee was an American novelist best known for To Kill a Mockingbird, a landmark novel about racial injustice in the U.S. South. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 and became a modern classic. She later published Go Set a Watchman, an earlier draft-related work.
Books by Harper Lee
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To Kill a Mockingbird
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Go Set A Watchman
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Quotes by Harper Lee
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Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.
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So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process.
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I just know Maycomb. I'm not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I'm certainly aware of it.
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She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. She persisted, and her subsequent reaction is something that all of us have known at one time or another. She did something every child has done-she tried to put the evidence of her offense away from her. But in this case she was no child hiding stolen contraband: she struck out at her victim-of necessity she must put him away from her-he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense.
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It had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had been one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing, keeping up with Jem, and besting anyone her own age in any contest requiring physical prowess.
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There was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus's vest front. I buried my head in it and listened to the small internal noises that went on behind the light blue cloth: his watch ticking, the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of his breathing.'Your stomach's growling,' I said.'I know it,' he said.
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A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishing pole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. . . . Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.
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People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for, and they have a right to subject their children to it.
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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 evasionquicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles —em. No, you had the right answer this afternoon, but the wrong reasons. Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're notattracting attention with it. Hotheadedness isn't.
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He might have hurt me a little,' Atticus conceded, 'but sn, you'll understand folks a little better when you're older. A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr Cunnignham was part of a mob last night, but he ws still a man.Every mob in every little Souhern town is always made up of people you know - doesn't say much for them, does it?''I'll say ot, ' said Jem.'So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses, didn't it?' said Atticus. 'That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.
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I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.- Atticus Finch
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If we followed our feelings all the time, we'd be like cats chasin' their tails.
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Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says that the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how to do it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won't you?
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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.
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Alexandra had been married for thirty-three years; if it had made any impression on her one way or another, she never showed it.
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Honey, the sun rises and sets with that Bill of hers. Everything he says is Gospel. She loves her man.Is that what loving your man is?Has a lot to do with it.Jean Louise said, You mean losing your own identity, don't you?In a way, yes, said Henry. Then I doubt if I shall ever marry.
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...baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. So don't let Mrs Dubose get you down. She had enough troubles or her own.
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She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.
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Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read
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Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
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