“She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. She persisted, and her subsequent reaction is something that all of us have known at one time or another. She did something every child has done-she tried to put the evidence of her offense away from her. But in this case she was no child hiding stolen contraband: she struck out at her victim-of necessity she must put him away from her-he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense.”

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About Harper Lee

American novelist

Harper Lee was an American novelist best known for her 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The book won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and became a classic of modern American literature. She also helped her close friend Truman Capote with research for In Cold Blood. An earlier draft of Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman, was published in 2015 as a sequel, and a later collection of her short stories and essays, The Land of Sweet Forever, was published after her death.

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Books by Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird

1969

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Go Set A Watchman

2016

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