“…he said if enough people—a stadium full, maybe—were to concentrate on one thing, such as setting a tree afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite of its own accord. I toyed with the idea of asking everyone below to concentrate on setting Tom Robinson free, but”

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "…he said if enough people—a stadium full, maybe—were to concentrate on one thing, such as setting a tree afire in the w…" by Harper Lee?
Harper Lee photo
Harper Lee 142
American author 1926–2016

Related quotes

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

““What harm have the trees done them?” he said. “Must they punish the grass for their own faults? Men are savages, who would set a land afire because they have a quarrel with other men.””

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 9, "Orm Embar" (Arren)

Jessica Chastain photo

“I was on the set of Tree of Life. He was with me, and he asked me [if I] would play Eleanor Rigby in his film.”

Jessica Chastain (1977) American actress

Vulture interview (2014)
Context: I was on the set of Tree of Life. He was with me, and he asked me [if I] would play Eleanor Rigby in his film. And I said, “Yes, but it’s so much the male perspective,” [whispers] like the majority of films that are made. I said, “I’d like to know more about the woman. I’d like to know her perspective as well.” So he went and he wrote Her. And it was very collaborative because every day as he’d write, I’d be working, and I’d come back and he’d ask me questions about sisters or whatnot and how women talk with each other, and I found that to be really exciting. … he was the full writer. I was his bounce board. Not story things, because that’s the main part of the film, but just things like, you know, cutting the hair. You know, because girls, we all tell each other, “Don’t cut your hair when you’re pregnant, don’t cut your hair when you have a breakup or when a tragedy happens.” It’s something that we like to do when we’re in an emotional place for some reason. Right? But that’s something that a man may not know, that’s inherently female. And so it was my idea, I wanted Eleanor to cut her hair off, because then it connects to then her disappearing herself as well.

“I would be pleased indeed, if the universe were full of blazing ovens, and concentration camps, and people deported.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Source: Journal of 1969, p. 118

Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
Alfred North Whitehead photo

“By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1910s, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 5.

Octavio Paz photo

“the reality beyond language is not completely reality, a reality that does not speak or say is not reality;
and the moment I say that, the moment I write, letter by letter, that a reality stripped of names is not reality, the names evaporate, they are air, they are a sound encased in another sound and in another and another, a murmur, a faint cascade of meanings that fade away to nothingness:
the tree that I say is not the tree that I see, tree does not say tree, the tree is beyond its name, a leafy, woody reality: impenetrable, untouchable, a reality beyond signs, immersed in itself, firmly planted in its own reality: I can touch it but I cannot name it, I can set fire to it but if I name it I dissolve it:
the tree that is there among the trees is not the tree that I name but a reality that is beyond names, beyond the word reality, it is simply reality just as it is, the abolition of differences and also the abolition of similarities;
the tree that I name is not the tree, and the other one, the one that I do not name and that is there, on the other side of my window, its trunk now black and its foliage still inflamed by the setting sun, is not the tree either, but, rather, the inaccessible reality in which it is planted:
between the one and the other there appears the single tree of sensation which is the perception of the sensation of tree that is vanishing, but
who perceives, who senses, who vanishes as sensations and perceptions vanish?”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“2018. He set my House afire, only to roast his Eggs.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1751) : Pray don't burn my House to roast your Eggs.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Madeleine Stowe photo

Related topics