Last Updated on September 6, 2024
Harper Lee is known best for writing the bestseller novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” published in 1960. The novel that centered around the Finch family won a Pulitzer Prize.
Over five decades later, Lee published “Go Set a Watchman”. It was her second released novel, but was written before her first bestseller. The second novel also revolved around the same characters in “Mockingbird,” but focused on their later lives.
On February 19, 2016, Lee died in her sleep. She was 89.
Early Life
Nelle Harper Lee was the youngest child of Amasa Coleman Lee, an attorney and a member of Alabama state legislature, and Frances Cunningham, a homemaker. For most of her life, Lee’s mother rarely left the house due to, as many believed, bipolar disorder. She had three siblings: Alice, Louise, and Edwin.
Truman Persons (better known as Truman Capote) was a close childhood friend. When they were growing up, Truman was often bullied for being less rowdy than the usual boys and for the fancy clothes he wore. Stronger than most of the boys in their neighborhood, Lee would often protect Truman from his tormenters.
Lee attended the Monroe County High School. There, she developed a passion for English literature. After high school, she went to College in Montgomery for a year. She then transferred to the University of Alabama and took up law. She was a writer for the university newspaper.
Lee studied at the university for several years, but didn’t complete her degree. In 1948, her father sent her to England to attend summer school at Oxford University. He hoped for her daughter to be inspired so she can finally finish her schooling. Lee studied European civilization as an exchange student. Alas, when she went back stateside, Lee dropped out of her studies and relocated to New York to pursue her dreams of becoming a writer.
Lee and Capote’s Writing Adventure
At age 23, Lee worked as a ticket agent to pay the rent while writing. In 1949, she was reunited with her old friend Capote, who was already a rising star at that time. She also met and became good friends with Michael Martin Brown, a Broadway composer and lyricist, and Joy, his wife.
In late 1949, Lee assisted Capote with a piece he was writing for The New Yorker. The story was about the effect of the murder of the Clutters, a family of four living in the farming area of Kansas. The two friends went to Kansas to talk with the townspeople along with the loved ones of the deceased. They also spoke with the investigators handling the crime.
Lee became Truman’s research assistant. She contributed to the interviews, at some point convincing many of the locals with her friendly and unpretentious attitude. With his fancy clothes and flamboyant fashion, Capote had a difficult time at first to connect with the townspeople.
While in Kansas doing their interviews, the suspected killers of the Clutter family were apprehended in Las Vegas. They were brought back to Kansas for questioning, which Lee and Capote had participated in.
Shortly after, the two returned to New York. Lee went back to writing her first novel. Capote started working on his newspaper article, which eventually evolved into the nonfiction bestseller, In Cold Blood.
About seven years later, as an extravagant Christmas present, the Browns offered to support Lee’s financial needs for a year so she can write full time. Grateful for the wonderful bounty, Lee resigned from her job and devoted all her time to writing.
The Browns introduced her to Maurice Craine, who became her agent. Through Craine, her manuscript for a story set in a small town in Alabama was presented to J.B. Lippincott Company, a well-known publishing house. That manuscript eventually became her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird
In July 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was released to the public. Not long after, the Book-of-the-Month Club took notice of her novel. The Literary Guild also picked the book as “the novel everyone needs to read.”
Her novel was significantly a lot more than just a coming-of-age tale. A substantial part of the story shows racial prejudices that happened in the South. The main character, Atticus Finch, was a lawyer who tried to help a black man who was charged for allegedly raping a white woman get a fair trial. Finch was trying to prevent him from being lynched to death by the angry white people in their small town.
A year after its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird received many awards and accolades. It won the esteemed Pulitzer Prize. A couple of years later, a screenplay, written by Horton Foote, was developed based on the book.
During the filming, Lee gave her support to the crew. She would often visit the set and grant interviews to back up the project. The film adaptation of the novel was released in 1962. It earned eight Academy Award nominations and won three awards. Gregory Peck won as Best Actor for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, a character who Lee apparently based on her father.
Below are the best of Harper Lee’s quotes.
Harper Lee Quotes
- “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.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions… but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kinds 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.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “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, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “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, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “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, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “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, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “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, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Things are always better in the morning.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. Scout.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “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, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “It’s not time to worry yet.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again and when they do it — seems that only the children weep. Good night.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “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.” – Harper Lee
- “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ’em all away from you. That’s never possible.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “As a reader I loathe introductions…Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Things are never as bad as they seem.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “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, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “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, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “The time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “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
- “Remember this also: it’s always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you’ll get along.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women – black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.” – Harper Lee
- “I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin’ after you.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “You can’t really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “’See there?’ Jem was scowling triumphantly. ‘Nothin’ to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl it’s mortifyin’.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Cry about the simple hell people give other people- without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people too.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “There’s just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to ’em. Even then, they ain’t worth the bullet it takes to shoot ’em.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “People don’t like to have somebody knowing more than they do. It aggravates them.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “If you did not want much, there was plenty.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “I never loved reading until I feared I would lose it. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it–seems that only children weep.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that’s the way I want to live.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Don’t you study about other folks’ business till you take care of your own.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Sometimes we have to kill a little so we can live.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.” – Harper Lee
- “The only thing I’m afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn’t be worth living in.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Nothin’s real scary except in books.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Autumn was her happiest season.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man’s heart, and a man’s failings—I’ll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes ’em like all of us.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Don’t push her. Let her go at her own speed. Push her and every mule in the county’d be easier to live with.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one’s mind incapable of definite purpose.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody…” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Finders were keepers unless title was proven.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “I guess it’s like an airplane: they’re the drag and we’re the thrust, together we make the thing fly. Too much of us and we’re nose-heavy, too much of them and we’re tail-heavy—it’s a matter of balance.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.” “Well, I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.” – Harper Lee
- “What does a bigot do when he meets someone who challenges his opinions? He doesn’t give. He stays rigid. Doesn’t even try to listen, just lashes out.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
- “Go away, the old buildings said. There is no place for you here. You are not wanted. We have secrets.” – Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
