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Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

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
Exorcism
Writes
Salt
Please
Worth
Writer
Writing

More quotes by Harper Lee

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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'm Charles Baker Harris...I can read
Harper Lee
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There's no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There's no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be.
Harper Lee
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No, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.
Harper Lee
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There's just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to 'em. Even then, they ain't worth the bullet it takes to shoot 'em.
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.
Harper Lee
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Let the dead bury the dead.
Harper Lee
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...in other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama Interview - March 1964
Harper Lee
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I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.
Harper Lee
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Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry.
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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We said good-bye, and Dill went inside the house. He evidently remembered he was engaged to me, for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly in front of Jem. Yawl write, hear? he bawled after us.
Harper Lee
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There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is the court.
Harper Lee
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Things are always better in the morning.
Harper Lee
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I didn't know how you were going to do it, but from now on I'll never worry about what'll become of you, son, you'll always have an idea.
Harper Lee
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Dill? Mm? Why do you reckon Boo Radleys never run off? Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me. Maybe he doesn't have anywhere to run off to
Harper Lee
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It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike--in the second place, folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do.
Harper Lee
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Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Harper Lee
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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.
Harper Lee