Pulitzer Prize winner and 'To Kill A Mockingbird' author Harper Lee smiles before receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 5, 2007.Getty
Renowned author Harper Lee died last year at the age of 89, but her work has kept her voice alive. The reclusive writer is remembered for "To Kill A Mockingbird," published in 1960, a now-classic novel that confronted racism and is still taught in classrooms around the United States. Lee won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for the book, and eventually released a follow-up, "Go Set a Watchman," which actually was written first.
“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
“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.”
“The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.”
Pulitzer Prize winner and 'To Kill A Mockingbird' author Harper Lee smiles before receiving the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 5, 2007.Getty
“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.”
“In New York you are your own person. You may reach out and embrace all of Manhattan in sweet aloneness, or you can go to hell if you want to.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
“Man’s capacity to live is measured by his degree of freedom from the drives that turn inward upon him. As one holds down a cork to the bottom of a stream, so may love be imprisoned by self: Remove self, and love rises to the surface of man’s being.”
“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, you don’t let ‘em get your goat. Try fightin’ with your head for a change.”
“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.”
