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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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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
Every
Worse
Gave
Gets
Novel
Talent
Hope
Objectives
Best
Limited
Better
Goodness

More quotes by Harper Lee

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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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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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The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets -
Harper Lee
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Where are your pants, son?
Harper Lee
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I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again.
Harper Lee
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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.
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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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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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
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She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.
Harper Lee
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People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.
Harper Lee
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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.
Harper Lee
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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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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
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Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.
Harper Lee
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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.
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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This time we aren't fighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home.
Harper Lee
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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.
Harper Lee
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They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.
Harper Lee