Today we all woke up to the sad news that Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird passed away at the age of 89. Her 1961 novel about small-town lawyer Atticus Finch’s battle to save the life of a black resident threatened by a racist mob, became a national institution and a defining text on the racial troubles in the deep south. If it's a book you haven't read since middle school - I suggest fixing that today.
Lee also released her second novel last year, set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, Go Set a Watchman.
To pay tribute to her work and words of wisdom, here are 10 quotes from the late Harper Lee:
1- "Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."
2- "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view."
3- "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."
4- "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
5- "I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks."
6- '"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'" That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. "'Your father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy.'"
7- "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."
8- "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win."
9- "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."
10- "Things are never as bad as they seem."