Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.
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
-
-
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 -
With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.
HARPER LEE -
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
HARPER LEE -
Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.
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 -
Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.
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 -
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 can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ’em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.
HARPER LEE -
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.
HARPER LEE -
The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.
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 -
I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.
HARPER LEE -
I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.
HARPER LEE -
You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
HARPER LEE -
Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.
HARPER LEE -
She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.
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 -
The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
HARPER LEE -
It’s better to be silent than to be a fool.
HARPER LEE -
As a reader I loathe introductions…Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.
HARPER LEE -
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 -
Things are always better in the morning.
HARPER LEE -
Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?
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