Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Write
Self
Must
Discipline
Different
Writer
Writing
Quite
Think
Call
Thinking
Learn
People
Process

More quotes by Harper Lee

Image
When they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice... His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.
Harper Lee
Image
Things are always better in the morning.
Harper Lee
Image
My book had a universal theme. It's not a racial novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization, not necessarily Southern civilization.
Harper Lee
Image
She's an old lady and she's ill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it's your job not to let her make you mad.
Harper Lee
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm little but I'm old.
Harper Lee
Image
Nothin’s real scary except in books.
Harper Lee
Image
Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.
Harper Lee
Image
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
Image
Havin' a gun around's an invitation to somebody to shoot you.
Harper Lee
Image
That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?
Harper Lee
Image
Folks were doin' a lot of runnin' that night
Harper Lee
Image
summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse summer was everything good to eatit was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.
Harper Lee
Image
I do my best to love everybody
Harper Lee
Image
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.
Harper Lee
Image
Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.
Harper Lee
Image
The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets -
Harper Lee
Image
Don't you study about other folks's business till you take care of your own.
Harper Lee
Image
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.
Harper Lee