You aren’t really a nigger-lover, then, are you?” “I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody… I’m hard put, sometimes—baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you. So don’t let Mrs. Dubose get you down. She has enough troubles of her own.

It remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. The following month at the Browns' East 50th townhouse Harper Lee received a gift of a year's wages from them with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. [citation needed]
Lee arrived in New York City in 1949 aged 23.

Nelle Harper Lee (born April 28 1926) is an American author known for her 1961 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird which deals with the issues of racism that the author observed as a child in her hometown of Monroeville Alabama. Lee has received numerous honorary degrees but has always declined to make a speech. Despite being Lee's only publiHarper Leed book it led to her being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature.