Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they’re quite different from people who must write.
HARPER LEECharacters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.
More Harper Lee Quotes
-
-
I do my best to love everybody.
HARPER LEE -
I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system – that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.
HARPER LEE -
Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?
HARPER LEE -
Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.
HARPER LEE -
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 -
Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.
HARPER LEE -
I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you’re working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn’t dream of interrupting on the golf course.
HARPER LEE -
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.
HARPER LEE -
Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.
HARPER LEE -
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 -
Things are always better in the morning.
HARPER LEE -
I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.
HARPER LEE -
Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.
HARPER LEE -
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.
HARPER LEE -
Things are never as bad as they seem.
HARPER LEE -
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
HARPER LEE -
Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.
HARPER LEE -
But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.
HARPER LEE -
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.
HARPER LEE -
You can’t really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.
HARPER LEE -
As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don’t think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, ‘I’m probably no better than you, but I’m certainly your equal.
HARPER LEE -
Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.
HARPER LEE -
We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.
HARPER LEE -
As a reader I loathe introductions…Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.
HARPER LEE -
The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
HARPER LEE -
Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
HARPER LEE