As a reader I loathe introductions…Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.
HARPER LEEWhen a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.
More Harper Lee Quotes
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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 -
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 -
Things are always better in the morning.
HARPER LEE -
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 -
Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?
HARPER LEE -
Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.
HARPER LEE -
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 -
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.
HARPER LEE -
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
HARPER LEE -
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 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 -
I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.
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 -
Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.
HARPER LEE -
There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.
HARPER LEE