Harper Lee Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More Harper Lee quote about:
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“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.”
-- Harper Lee -
“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
-- Harper Lee -
“I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.”
-- Harper Lee -
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
-- Harper Lee -
“People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. Yourself.”
-- Harper Lee -
“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”
-- Harper Lee -
“Writing is something you'll never learn in any university or at any school. It's something that is within you, and if it isn't there, nothing can put it there.”
-- Harper Lee -
“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
-- Harper Lee -
“My objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me. I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse.”
-- Harper Lee -
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
-- Harper Lee -
“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?”
-- Harper Lee -
“That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?”
-- Harper Lee -
“With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.”
-- Harper Lee -
“Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write.”
-- Harper Lee -
“He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”
-- Harper Lee -
“I didn't expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.”
-- Harper Lee -
“As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.”
-- Harper Lee -
“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
-- Harper Lee -
“Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?”
-- Harper Lee -
“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.”
-- Harper Lee -
“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”
-- Harper Lee -
“There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.”
-- Harper Lee -
“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
-- Harper Lee -
“I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you're working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn't dream of interrupting on the golf course.”
-- Harper Lee -
“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change. -Atticus Finch”
-- Harper Lee -
“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.”
-- Harper Lee
