Harper Lee, born 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, has been on the mind of the literary world ever since it was announced this week that her second novel will be published over fifty years after her first. Lee penned the iconic Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. It is hard to get her off of my mind these days. Her interesting life included editing her college’s humor magazine, a stint in law school, and being close friends with Truman Capote, who she helped with his research for In Cold Blood. She dedicated many years of her life to honing her craft before publishing To Kill a Mockingbird.  Find a more complete biography HERE. It was hard to find quotes from Harper Lee that did not come from her famous novel. And eventually I gave up trying because the quotes from Mockingbird are so good. Reading them reminds me of why her novel has touched so many, and why the world hopes to see a second novel from her. 

Harper Lee Quotes from To Kill a Mockingbird:

• I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks. 
• You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. 
• 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. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
• People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
• The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

And here is one about writing!

• Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.