Harper Lee Book Quotes

The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies.

Nothin’s real scary except in books.

Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. [Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006]

When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who’s not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel. Stupid, isn’t it?

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions.

If we followed our feelings all the time, we'd be like cats chasin' their tails.

He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of gray house with sad brown doors.

You don't have to learn much out of books, it's like if you want to learn about cows, you go milk one.

Finch kept his house militarily spotless, but books tended to pile up wherever he sat down, and because it was his habit to sit down anywhere he got ready, there were small stacks of books in odd places about the house that were a constant curse to his cleaning woman. He would not let her touch them, and he insisted on apple-pie neatness, so the poor creature was obliged to vacuum, dust, and polish around them. One unfortunate maid lost her head and lost his place in Tuckwell’s Pre-Tractarian Oxford, and Dr. Finch shook a broom at her.

Asked him and he said he wasn't. Besides, nothin's real scary except on books.

...nothin’s real scary except in books.

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.

The thing is, what I’m tryin‘ to say is— they do get on a lot better without me, I can’t help them any. They ain’t mean. They buy me everything I want, but it’s now—you’ve-got-it-go-play-with-it. You’ve got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it.

The book to read is not the one that thinks for you, but the one which makes you think.

Besides, nothin’s real scary except in books.

Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions.

I’d be churched to death, bridge-partied to death, called upon to give book reviews at the Amanuensis Club, expected to become a part of the community. It takes a lot of what I don’t have to be a member of this wedding.

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." .... "That's what I thought too," he said at last, "when I was your age. If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time . . . it's because he wants to stay inside.

I thought women liked to be thought strange and mysterious.” “No, they just like to look strange and mysterious. When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who’s not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel.

Well that ain’t so. You get babies from each other. But there’s this man, too—he has all these babies just waitin‘ to wake up, he breathes life into ’em…” Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a gray house with sad brown doors. “Dill?” “Mm?” “Why do you reckon Boo Radley’s never run off?” Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me. “Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to…

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” —To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The book to read is not the one that thinks for you, but the one that makes you think.

He was letting you break your icons one by one. he was letting you reduce him to the status of a human being.

I said, you and Jem were very special to me—you were my dream-children, but as Kipling said, that’s another story . . . call on me tomorrow, and you’ll find me a grave man.

every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who’s not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel.

Selalu ada saja jenis orang yang terlalu sibuk memikirkan akhirat sehingga tak pernah belajar hidup di dunia ini.

The book to read is not the one that things for you but the one which makes you think.

The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think .

There are just some kind of men who... who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.

...time spent indoors was time wasted.

the one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule

The only things that she cares about are a comfortable chair, a good reading light, and enough books and magazines.

Didn’t you know? Hasn’t Atticus gotten around to telling you that? Why, I’m amazed at Zandra not . . . good heavens, I thought all of Maycomb knew that.” “Knew what?” “I was in love with your mother.” “My mother?

She rubbed salt into it: I’m thoughtless, all right. Selfish, self-willed, I eat too much, and I feel like the Book of Common Prayer. Lord forgive me for not doing what I should have done and for doing what I shouldn’t have done—oh hell.

Whatcha readin’?” I asked. Atticus turned the book over. “Something of Jem’s. Called The Gray Ghost.” I was suddenly awake. “Why’d you get that one?” “Honey, I don’t know. Just picked it up. One of the few things I haven’t read,” he said pointedly. “Read

He was prodding her. Let him. They were on safe ground. “Well, in trying to satisfy one amendment, it looks like they rubbed out another one. The Tenth. It’s only a small amendment, only one sentence long, but it seemed to be the one that meant the most, somehow.

Why did you take so much trouble with me today? I know how you hate to move out of that house.” “Because you’re my child. You and Jem were the children I never had. You two gave me something long ago, and I’m trying to pay my debts. You two helped me a—” “How, sir?

Even though he had lived in Monroe County his whole life, Walter McMillian had never heard of Harper Lee or To Kill a Mockingbird. Monroeville, Alabama, celebrated its native daughter Lee shamelessly after her award-winning book became a national bestseller in the 1960s. She returned to Monroe County but secluded herself and was rarely seen in public. Her reclusiveness proved no barrier to the county’s continued efforts to market her literary classic—or to market itself by using the book’s celebrity. Production of the film adaptation brought Gregory Peck to town for the infamous courtroom scenes; his performance won him an Academy Award. Local leaders later turned the old courthouse into a “Mockingbird” museum. A group of locals formed “The Mockingbird Players of Monroeville” to present a stage version of the story. The production was so popular that national and international tours were organized to provide an authentic presentation of the fictional story to audiences everywhere. Sentimentality about Lee’s story grew even as the harder truths of the book took no root.

Like a lot of small town bookworms, she was too well-read to be a true country bumpkin, but too country to be anything but mesmerized by Manhattan. She had enough books to read, and movies to see, and museums to visit to last her several lifetimes. The city overwhelmed and delighted her.

Get this in your head right now, you ain’t pregnant and you never were. That ain’t the way it is.” “Well if I ain’t, then what am I?” “With all your book learnin’, you are the most ignorant child I ever did see . . .” Her voice trailed off. “. . . but I don’t reckon you really ever had a chance.

...they just like to look strange and mysterious. When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who’s not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel. Stupid, isn't it?' 'She wants a father instead of a husband, then.' 'That's what it amounts to,' she said. 'The books are right on the score.

Dill's voice went on steadily in the darkness: "The thing is, what I’m tryin‘ to say is— they do get on a lot better without me, I can’t help them any. They ain’t mean. They buy me everything I want, but it’s now-you’ve-got-it-go-play-with-it. You’ve got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it." Dill tried to deepen his voice. "You're not a boy. Boys get out and play baseball with other boys, they don't hang around the house worryin' their folks.

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lillies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep at taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a gray house with sad brown doors.

The knife hit deep, suddenly: “Jean Louise, your brother worried about your thoughtlessness until the day he died!” It was raining softly on his grave now, in the hot evening. You never said it, you never even thought it; if you’d thought it you’d have said it. You were like that. Rest well, Jem. She rubbed salt into it: I’m thoughtless, all right. Selfish, self-willed, I eat too much, and I feel like the Book of Common Prayer. Lord forgive me for not doing what I should have done and for doing what I shouldn’t have done—oh hell.

If Hank and I—Hank. She glanced down the long, low-ceilinged livingroom at the double row of women, women she had merely known all her life, and she could not talk to them five minutes without drying up stone dead. I can’t think of anything to say to them. They talk incessantly about the things they do, and I don’t know how to do the things they do. If we married—if I married anybody from this town—these would be my friends, and I couldn’t think of a thing to say to them. I would be Jean Louise the Silent. I couldn’t possibly bring off one of these affairs by myself, and there’s Aunty having the time of her life. I’d be churched to death, bridge-partied to death, called upon to give book reviews at the Amanuensis Club, expected to become a part of the community. It takes a lot of what I don’t have to be a member of this wedding.

Put yourself in the shoes of others and pick up some literary fiction. Go for books like To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, or The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Find social blenders that allow you to move beyond your normal social circles. Visit places that voted in the opposite end of the political spectrum from you. If you listen to people’s stories, you may find that you might have made some of the same choices if you had lived their life rather than yours. We are not so very different; we just had different starting points. And while it is easy to stop listening and dismiss people we disagree with as ignorant, as evil, and as the enemy, that will only lead us to misery. But perhaps if we listen we might learn that it is inequality, unfairness, and injustice that are the enemy and that empathy, trust, and cooperation are the way forward.

more than anything.” He turned to Jean Louise. “Seven-thirty tonight and no Landing. We’ll go to the show.” “Okay. Where’re you all going?” “Courthouse. Meeting.” “On Sunday?” “Yep.” “That’s right, I keep forgetting all the politicking’s done on Sunday in these parts.” Atticus called for Henry to come on. “Bye, baby,” he said. Jean Louise followed him into the livingroom. When the front door slammed behind her father and Henry, she went to her father’s chair to tidy up the papers he had left on the floor beside it. She picked them up, arranged them in sectional order, and put them on the sofa in a neat pile. She crossed the room again to straighten the stack of books on his lamp table, and was doing so when a pamphlet the size of a business envelope caught her eye. On its cover was a drawing of an anthropophagous Negro; above the drawing was printed The Black Plague. Its author was somebody with several academic degrees after his name. She opened the pamphlet, sat down in her father’s chair, and began reading. When she had finished, she took the pamphlet by one of its corners, held it like she would hold a dead rat by the tail, and walked into the kitchen. She held the pamphlet in front of her aunt. “What is this thing?” she said. Alexandra looked over her glasses at it. “Something of your father’s.” Jean Louise stepped on the garbage can trigger and threw the pamphlet in. “Don’t do that,” said Alexandra. “They’re hard to come by these days.” Jean Louise opened her mouth, shut it, and opened it again. “Aunty, have you read that thing? Do you know what’s in it?” “Certainly.” If Alexandra had uttered an obscenity in her face, Jean Louise would have been less surprised. “You—Aunty, do you know the stuff in that thing makes Dr. Goebbels look like a naive little country boy?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jean Louise. There are a lot of truths in that book.” “Yes indeedy,” said Jean Louise wryly. “I especially liked the part where the Negroes, bless their hearts, couldn’t help being inferior to the white race because their skulls are thicker and their brain-pans shallower—whatever that means—so we must all be very kind to them and not let them do anything to hurt themselves and keep them in their places. Good God, Aunty—” Alexandra was ramrod straight. “Well?” she said. Jean Louise said, “It’s just that I never knew you went in for salacious reading material, Aunty.” Her aunt was silent, and Jean Louise continued: “I was real impressed with the parable where since the dawn of history the rulers of the world have always been white, except Genghis Khan or somebody—the author was real fair about that—and he made a killin’ point about even the Pharaohs were white and their subjects were either black or Jews—” “That’s true, isn’t it?” “Sure, but what’s that got to do with the case?” When Jean Louise felt apprehensive, expectant, or on edge, especially when confronting her aunt, her brain clicked to the meter of Gilbertian tomfoolery. Three sprightly figures

... Before Watchman was published, I was skeptical and unhappy — all the publicity made it sound like nothing but a clever lawyer and a greedy publisher in cahoots to exploit an old woman. Now, having read the book, I glimpse a different tragedy. Lee was a young writer on a roll, with several novels in mind to write after this one. She wrote none of them. Silence, lifelong. I wonder if the reason she never wrote again was because she knew her terrifyingly successful novel was untrue. In obeying the dictates of popular success, letting wishful thinking corrupt honest perception, she lost the self-credibility she, an honest woman, needed in order to write. So I’m glad, now, that Watchman was published. It hasn’t done any harm to the old woman, and I hope it’s given her pleasure. And it redeems the young woman who wrote this book, who wanted to tell some truths about the Southern society that lies to itself so much. She went up North to tell the story, probably thinking she’d be free to tell it there. But she was coaxed or tempted into telling the simplistic, exculpatory lies about it that the North cherishes so much. The white North, that is. And a good part of the white South too, I guess. Little white lies . . . North or South, they’re White lies. But not little ones. Harper Lee was a good writer. She wrote a lovable, greatly beloved book. But this earlier one, for all its faults and omissions, asks some of the hard questions To Kill a Mockingbird evades.

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence And Some More Books You Might Find of Use Jane Austen, Mansfield Park Elizabeth Barrett Browning Judy Blume, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret Clare Chambers, Small Pleasures Roald Dahl, Matilda Caroline Dooner, The F*ck It Diet Kate Forsyth, Bitter Greens Jane Gardam, A Long Way from Verona James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small Andrew Kaufman, All My Friends Are Superheroes Marian Keyes, Sushi for Beginners Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird Carson McCullers, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Alice Munro, Dear Life Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

In the book, the Mockingbird symbolizes the innocent who falls victim to evil people.

Just to be clear, the man from the art department wasn’t boasting about publishing Hitler’s tome. He didn’t say, ‘We’ve got a brilliantly eclectic list here at Random House, Bridget, so you’re in good company. We’ve got Harper Lee, Katie Price, Hitler, you. So I thought, for the front cover, we could have you sitting on planet Venus, looking over at planet Mars with a sort of confused look on your face, like on all those other books by women now. We just need to let the readers know that this book is a funny, light-hearted look at feminism, and how you approach feminism and violations of human rights in your stand-up, Bridget. We need to reassure them it’s not going to be full of photographs of men being horrifically tortured and suffocated with their own cocks while loads of feminists stand around laughing, drinking yards of ale, welding metals and thermoplastics and playing darts with the donated embalmed penes of dead male feminists. Many of our readers won’t want to read a book like that. We are a commercial publishing house.

IN HONOR OF HARPER LEE, WHOSE NOVEL PLAYS A SIGNIFICANT PART IN "FINDING GRACE" I SHARE THESE LINES: Violet and I met at our fort at one o’clock. On our way over to Maryann’s we talked about the book, which Vi called T-KAM for short. I wasn’t sure how to ask, but I had to know. “Hey…what’d you think about the part where Scout asks Atticus if he’s a…um…you know, a…ni–Negro-lover?” Vi gave me a sideways glance. “You can say it. I know you don’t mean any harm. Scout asked him if he was a nigger-lover, but she’s just a confused kid. I really liked that he told her he was one.” “That part shocked me.” “Yeah, and the next time someone yells nigger-lover at my family I’m going to be like Atticus Finch and tell them that I’m trying to love everybody.” Violet grabbed my hand. “But you know what’s crazy?” Her eyes narrowed, bridged together by two hard lines. Her mouth shifted into a frown so fast that I braced myself. “What?” “When people say that, I never know if I’m the nigger or the nigger-lover.

What I can tell you is DO IT. Publish book one and get book two out as soon as possible. There are very few Harper Lee’s. Most of us are going to have to write a few books to get good at it.

Cover for Harper Lee's Novel Revealed Chris Schluep Shop this article on Amazon.com Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee Arguably the most-discussed book of the year had its cover revealed on People.com this morning. It's Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman , and it's a lovely homage to the classic cover of Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird . Here's what we said about Go Set A Watchman when it was first announced: What would Scout be like as a grown up? We're about to find out. Go Set a Watchman is set during the mid-1950s and features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood. You can see the full post here . Shop this article on Amazon.com Go Set a Watchman Harper Lee Print Book Kindle Book     Posted: Mar 25 10:30 am

To Kill a Mockingbird would become like Catch-22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, On the Road, Soul on Ice, and The Feminine Mystique—books that seized the imagination of the post–World War II generation

If you were to read for 16 hours a day at 300 words per minute, you could keep up with a world containing an average population of 100,000 living Harper Lees or 400 living Isaac Asimovs.

My own list includes Allen Drury, Advise and Consent; Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men; Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird; George Orwell, 1984; Gore Vidal, Washington, D.C.; Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here. I am also a big fan of the books and short stories of Ward Just. My son came of age watching The West Wing, and I loved both the riotously funny if cynical book and British TV series Yes, Minister. And, even if it is not a substitute for reading The Federalist Papers, you would be hard pressed to spend a more enjoyable evening than watching the musical Hamilton.

Debus, A. G. Man and Nature in the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press. Eamon, William. Science and the Secrets of Nature. Princeton University Press. Eisenbichler, Konrad, editor. The Pre-Modern Teenager: Youth in Society 1150–1650. University of Toronto Press. Evangelisti, Silvia. Nuns: A History of Convent Life. Oxford University Press. Fenlon, Iain. Music and Culture in Late Renaissance Italy. Oxford University Press. Findlen, Paula. Possessing Nature. University of California Press. Flinders, Carol Lee. Enduring Grace. HarperCollins. Glucklich, Ariel. Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul. Oxford University Press. Greenfield, Amy Butler. A Perfect Red. Black Swan Books.

The novel predicted the triumphs of the post-1968 PMC: the moral rectitude of the virtuous lawyer and his high-spirited daughter renders the solution to racism attractive to the establishment—work on individual capacities for empathy and walking in another human being’s shoes; read books; have righteous feelings. To Kill a Mockingbird was an extraordinarily effective piece of Cold War anti-Communist propaganda: based on a liberal fantasy that antiracism is about good white people defending helpless black people against bad (poor) white people, it created an image of American liberalism that was a powerful tool for winning hearts and minds at home and around the world.

Some authors (e.g., Margaret Mitchell, Ralph Ellison, and Harper Lee) published first books that made such an impact that they found it almost impossible to publish a second book.

with Dumbledore but with a literary figure from a different novel: Atticus Finch from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which Rowling once named as one of her top 10 recommended books for young readers. (Higgins, 2006) Scout, the narrator, remembers Atticus as “the bravest man who ever lived.

She had enough books to read--and movies to see, and museums to visit--to last her several lifetimes.