Charles J. Shields > Quotes

“Self-pity is a sin. It is a form of living suicide.”
― Charles J. Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It’s sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it’s heartbreak most of the time. --Harper Lee”
― Charles Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“She just wanted to be comfortable in her own skin...But she would not stop to seek others' approval. The notion that she should never seemed to enter her head. Her right to live as she pleased was not up for negotiation, even if it ran against the grain of the milieu at Huntingdon.”
― Charles J. Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“I must write…I like to write. Sometimes I’m afraid that I like it too much because when I get into work I don’t want to leave it. As a result I’ll go for days without leaving the house or wherever I happen to be. I’ll go out long enough to get papers and pick up some food and that’s it. It’s strange, but instead of hating writing I love it too much. --Harper Lee”
― Charles Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“The great purpose in life is to take your destiny out of the hands of others.”
― Charles J. Shields

“It’s absolutely essential that a writer know himself, for until he knows his abilities and limitations, his talents and problems, he will be unable to produce anything of real value. Secondly, you must be able to look coldly at what you do. The writer must know for whom he writes, why he writes, and if his writing says what he means for it to say. Writing is, in a way, a contest of knowing, of seeing the dream, of getting there, and of achieving what you set out to do. The simplest way to reach this goal is to simply say what you mean as clearly and precisely as you know how.--Harper Lee”
― Charles Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“You took her as she was. She wasn't trying to impress anyone," said Claude Nunnelly.”
― Charles J. Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“The Kansas state motto, "Ad astra per aspera" - To the stars through difficulties. ”
― Charles J. Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“I think part of your success lies in the shock of recognition- or as the Japanese might say, 'the unexpected recognition of the faithful "suchness" of very ordinary things'.”
― Charles J. Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“At home, he (A.C. Lee) encouraged Nelle to clamber up on him lap to "help" him read the newspaper or complete the crossword puzzle.”
― Charles J. Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“the story of a father’s love for his children, and the love they gave in return.”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“She had students read their compositions aloud so that everyone could hear how good writing had three Cs: clarity, coherence, and cadence.”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“People who have made peace with themselves are the people I most admire in the world.”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“Gus Lee, who later wrote Honor and Duty”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“The one subject never discussed, in my experience, was race relations. The prevailing view was that there was no reason to upset the status quo, and most were willing to continue existing conditions indefinitely.”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“occurred to Nelle. I am satisfied”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“TO LIVE IN HEARTS WE LEAVE BEHIND IS NOT TO DIE”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“Garden City: Dreams in a Kansas Town,”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“Some students, he realized, were in the workshop primarily to avoid being drafted, and not because of an overwhelming desire to write. Quietly, he let it be known that he didn’t care whether the young men in his classes submitted anything; he wouldn’t flunk them, which could result in losing their student deferment and making them eligible for the draft.133”
― Charles J. Shields, And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut

“apart people.”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“In high school, Sturgeon had been captain of his gymnastic team, and he announced that he would perform one of his best tricks. Clearing away some of the furniture in the living room, he stood with his feet together, back straight, arms outstretched, and suddenly whirled backward in a flip. But instead of landing upright, he hit the floor on his knees, shaking the whole house. Struggling to his feet, “humiliated and laughing in agony,” Kurt could tell, Sturgeon would become the model for one of Vonnegut’s best-known characters: Kilgore Trout, the wise fool of science fiction, ignored, sold only in pornographic bookstores, and half-mad with frustration.43 But Sturgeon wasn’t a fictional character—his reversals and the blows to his pride were real. And Kurt was afraid he had just witnessed a glimpse of his own future, too. “Kilgore Trout is the lonesome and unappreciated writer I thought I might become.”
― Charles J. Shields, And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut

“An imaginary planet has a role like a clown in a Shakespeare play. Every so often an audience needs a breather, a fresh view. Other planets provide that. But every time I write about another planet it is deliberately so unrealistic that people can’t really believe it. In a way it makes our own planet more important, more real.”66”
― Charles J. Shields, And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut

“The irony is, if we divide ourselves for our own comfort, no one will have comfort.”
― Charles J. Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

“KURT WAS nearly fifty years old when a generation of young readers found him. “I certainly didn’t go after the youth market or anything like that,” he said. “I didn’t have my fingers on any pulse; I was simply writing.”6 But he did have a theory about his appeal. It was because he addressed “sophomoric questions that full adults regard as settled”: whether there is a God, for instance, what the good life consists of, whether we should expect a reward for moral behavior.7 It didn’t faze him that these and similar questions had already been addressed innumerable times by philosophers from Boethius to Camus. His purpose for draping ethical questions in humorous costumes was to “catch people before they become generals and senators and presidents, and you poison their minds with humanity. Encourage them to make a better world.”8 And who”
― Charles J. Shields, And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut

“Maybe it was possible to will yourself to be the kind of person you wanted to be. Practicing that person, performing him, despite other people's skepticism, might bring off a new invention, which would be you, the hero of your own life.”
― Charles J. Shields, The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life

“A Wink at Justice,”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“E. B. White wrote, “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.”1”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee

“He was a boring bully. Never hit me, but he would talk and talk about science until my sister and I were bored shitless.”54”
― Charles J. Shields, And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut

“Readers often remark on how Vonnegut’s humor contributes strongly to the sense of him being right there on the page. He creates this intimacy, for the first time in Cat’s Cradle, by aligning himself with the reader through talking about something that’s taboo.146 He was a practitioner of what Freud called the “tendentious joke.” This kind of humor, and Vonnegut will come to rely on it (some say too much), is obscene or hostile; it tends to be cynical, critical, and blasphemous, giving voice to a need to defy authority or air “bad thoughts.” The”
― Charles J. Shields, And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut

“I move the previous question,”
― Charles J. Shields, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee