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

More quotes by Harper Lee

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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.
Harper Lee
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I don't hafta take his sass
Harper Lee
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You can choose your friends, but you sho' can't choose your family.
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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They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.
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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Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean.
Harper Lee
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I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.
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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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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So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.
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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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.
Harper Lee
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I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.
Harper Lee
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Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.
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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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
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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?
Harper Lee
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Where are your pants, son?
Harper Lee
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That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?
Harper Lee