Quote

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

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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
Kill
Jem
Wisdom
Nest
Enjoy
Gardens
Music
Nests
Heart
Sing
Thing
Hearts
Make
Garden
Finches
People
Sin
Mockingbird

More quotes by Harper Lee

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Southern lawyers don't read novels much.
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...in other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama Interview - March 1964
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Where are your pants, son?
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Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.
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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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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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They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.
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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.
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I try to give'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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I don't want to hear any words like that while I'm here. Scout, you'll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don't you?' I said not particularly.
Harper Lee
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People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
Harper Lee
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As a reader I loathe introductions...Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.
Harper Lee
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Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.
Harper Lee
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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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Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.
Harper Lee
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Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean.
Harper Lee