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

More quotes by Harper Lee

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It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.
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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.
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There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible.
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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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Finders were keepers unless title was proven.
Harper Lee
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Summer, and he watches his children's heart break. Autumn again and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.
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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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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.
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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.
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Nothin’s real scary except in books.
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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We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.
Harper Lee
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Where are your pants, son?
Harper Lee
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Folks were doin' a lot of runnin' that night
Harper Lee
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In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one's mind incapable of definite purpose.
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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Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
Harper Lee
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When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake.
Harper Lee
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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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We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us.
Harper Lee