A Quote by Kevin Young
Rereading 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I was struck by what I had forgotten of the book: in a manner of pages, we encounter shame, history, ruin, conflicting stories, and wounds badly healed; in short, the South.
Related Quotes
When I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I was so struck by the universality of small towns.
It is the false shame of fools to try to conceal wounds that have not healed.
Psychotherapy is what God has been secretly doing for centuries by other names; that is, he searches through our personal history and heals what needs to be healed - the wounds of childhood or our own self-inflicted wounds.
I have finished To Kill a Mockingbird. It is now my favorite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book.
I started writing the book without realizing I was writing a book. That sounds stupid, but it's true. I'd been trying and failing to make a different manuscript work, and I thought I was just taking a break by writing some short stories. I'm not a very good short story writer - the amazing compression that is required for short stories doesn't come easily to me. But anyway, I thought I'd try to write some short stories. And a structure took shape - I stumbled upon it.
My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.
I first read Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' as a teen in school, like you did. I read the book alone, eating lunch at my locker, neatly scored oranges my mother divided into five lines with a circle at the top, so my fingers could dig more easily into the orange skin. To this day, the smell of oranges reminds me of 'Mockingbird.'
My favorite book is 'To Kill A Mockingbird' by Harper Lee. It is multi-layered, and I see something new in it every time I read it.
I would say what was always on her[Harper Lee] mind was the stories she had to tell, and the story was pretty obvious in "To Kill A Mockingbird," maybe a bit - little bit less obvious and more obscure in "Go Set A Watchman."
I don't think I'll ever lose the feeling that I had when I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - Harper Lee was going back into her childhood. I grew up in a real small town - Lee's was in the South, mine the Northwest - but small towns have a lot in common. There was such a revelation in knowing that a story could be told like that.
D'ye ken that the only time I am without pain is in your bed, Sassenach? When I take ye, when I lie in your arms-my wounds are healed, then, my scars forgotten.
I have a book in the pipeline of short stories. You want to hear an agent scream, say 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.
I have a book in the pipeline of short stories. You want to hear an agent scream, say 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.'
My first book came out again - the re-issue from 2001. I was rereading it to make sure that I didn't miss any mistakes, and I didn't know who had written some of these stories. I really didn't. I am a different person now. It's weird. I think if stories are good, they have to have a life of their own that's independent of the writer. I like to think of my characters out there in other peoples' heads. That's a nice thing to think about.
Though my short stories are the more readable, my novels do have more to say; and they will, if anyone has the patience for it, repay a rereading.
The only things I read are gossip columns. If I read three pages of a book, I'm out like a light. When I pick up the book again, I've forgotten what I've read and have to start over again. By page three, even if I've just awakened from a nine -hour nap, I fall asleep again. So if anyone gives me a book, it had better have lots of pictures.
