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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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Harper Lee
Age: 89 †
Born: 1926
Born: April 28
Died: 2016
Died: February 19
Musician
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Monroeville
Alabama
Nelle Harper Lee
Society
Motivated
Time
Gentleman
Code
Guilt
Committed
Merely
Rigid
Crime
Gentlemen
Broken
Honored

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Naturally, you don't sit down in white hot inspiration and write with a burning flame in front of you. But since I knew I could never be happy being anything but a writer, and Mockingbird put itself together for me so accommodatingly, I kept at it because I knew it had to be my first novel, for better or for worse.
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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.
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Southern lawyers don't read novels much.
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Havin' a gun around's an invitation to somebody to shoot you.
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The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.
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Don't you study about other folks's business till you take care of your own.
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Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again.
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Miss Caroline seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogs from the time they were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature.
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Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.
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Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.
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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.
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I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again.
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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.
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The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets -
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Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.
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When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake.
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You can choose your friends, but you sho' can't choose your family.
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Finders were keepers unless title was proven.
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You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.
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They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.
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