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 LEEMy 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.
More Harper Lee Quotes
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Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?
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 -
You can’t really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.
HARPER LEE -
You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
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 -
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 -
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 -
People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.
HARPER LEE -
Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.
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 -
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 -
Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.
HARPER LEE -
It’s better to be silent than to be a fool.
HARPER LEE -
Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.
HARPER LEE -
When 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.
HARPER LEE