Atticus said to Jem one day, "I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays 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. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

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.