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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

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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
University
Within
Learn
School
Nothing
Writing
Something
Never

More quotes by Harper Lee

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I try to give'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason.
Harper Lee
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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?
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We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.
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Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.
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Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean.
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Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry.
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Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.
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Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.
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But sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down.
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A man can condemn his enemies, but it's wiser to know them.
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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'm little but I'm old.
Harper Lee
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Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.
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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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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.
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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.
Harper Lee
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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
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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
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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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Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant.
Harper Lee