'Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy ... That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

'Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.'

- Harper Lee from "To Kill a Mockingbird"

'Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—and sings the tunes without the words—and never stops at all.'

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

'The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.'

- American musician BB King (1925-2015)

'You don't get to choose how you're going to die or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.'

- Musician and activist Joan Baez (1941-present)

'Voices ought not be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.'

- Iconic singer Sam Cooke (1931–1964)

The 100 best Pulitzer Prize-winning books

No ranking is definitive, but this site compiled expert analysis with book sales and other factors to rank the best books to win the Pulitzer. The list is topped by Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" and includes fiction and nonfiction winners, providing a starred fan ranking and endorsements from experts and famous people.

'A lion never roars after a kill.'

-Coaching legend Dean Smith (1931-2015)

Twain ruthlessly criticized other writers

The writer was known for lambasting popular writers of his time, including Jane Austen and Robert Louis Stevenson. One of his most famous takedowns is “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences,” an essay that simultaneously mocks Cooper’s popular adventure tales and satirizes the pretentiousness of literary criticism. Remarking on Cooper’s novel “The Deerslayer,” Twain wrote, “its conversations are—oh! Indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.”

'The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.'

- Mark Twain, from "Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales"

'There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.'

- Writer Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

'And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.'

-Ralph Ellison, from "Invisible Man" (1913-1994)

Watch a 1965 press conference with Bob Dylan where he mocks the media's focus on celebrity.

'If you can't do it with feeling, don't.'

-Singer Patsy Cline (1932-1963)

'Life's short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands, and buts.'

Loving bad art isn't always about mockery

Dr. John Dyck, an assistant professor of philosophy at Mississippi State, says admirers of "so good they're bad" works like "The Room" do not do so ironically. "They love it as a gorgeous freak accident of nature, something that turned out beautifully—not despite, but because of the failure of its creators."

'Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.'

- Maya Angelou

'Love planted a rose, and the world turned sweet.'

-Author and poet Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929)

O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became symbols for her fiction

O'Connor was drawn to peacocks because of their dichotomy—people were drawn to the beauty of their feathers but turned off by the ugliness of their behavior. It was an apt symbol for her fiction and the birds featured prominently on several of her books' covers.

'A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.'

- Jackie Robinson, the first Black MLB player (1919-1972)

'You will never feel proud of your work if you find no joy within it; your best work is always joyful work.'

- Stevie Wonder (1950-present)

Writer James Baldwin once criticized Langston Hughes for squandering his talent

In 1959, Baldwin, the author of renowned works like “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Giovanni’s Room,” reviewed Hughes’ “Selected Poems” for the New York Times. Baldwin panned the book, writing, “Every time I read Langston Hughes I am amazed all over again by his genuine gifts—and depressed that he has done so little with them.” (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

'Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.'

Meyer Wolfsheim in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"

'I've come to the conclusion that life is for the taking and just too short to dwell on the negative.'

- Cranberries lead singer Dolores O'Riordan (1971-2018)

'I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot ... The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.'

- Author Jack London (1876 - 1916)

Taylor Swift's one-note melody increases her relatability

Despite music’s variety, a few musical elements have been scientifically proven to make a song compelling to listeners. Swift's one-note melody helps her songs mimic the cadence of speech, assisting in her storytelling and accessible image.

Jazz provided a soundtrack for the Civil Rights Movement

Songs like Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," which portrayed the grim brutality of lynching, and John Coltrane's "Alabama," which was modeled on the rhythm of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., were the backbeat of the movement.

A quote by Lauren Bacall

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly."

Twain read (and lampooned) classic literature

Ever the ironist, Twain claimed to have “ no liking for novels or stories.” Obviously, that was untrue: He read widely, devouring books by Charles Dickens, slave narratives, and texts on astronomy. He also loved John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” which he called “something everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

Charlie Parker's 'Ornithology' is one of bebop jazz's defining standards—and a self-referential nod to Parker's nickname, Bird.

'Live a life so when I die, there's standing room only.'

- Tim McGraw (1967-present)

'The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.'

- Poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

Claude McKay's poem 'If We Must Die' criticized racial violence

The poem, a Shakespearean sonnet, is a critique of the violence that Black Americans faced at home in America. It was written in the summer of 1919, also known as "Red Summer," when several white supremacist attacks and race riots broke out across the country.

'No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.'

-Charles Dickens (1812-1870), in "Our Mutual Friend"

Kurt Vonnegut's satire embraced dark humor

Books like "Cat’s Cradle" and "Slaughterhouse Five" satirized the international appetite for war, which the 20th-century writer found both horrifying and hilarious. It’s a combination that some called “gallows humor,” a classification Vonnegut himself remembered Sigmund Freud describing. “One of the examples Freud gives is a man about to be hanged,” Vonnegut once recalled, “and the hangman says, ‘Do you have anything to say?’ The condemned man replies, ‘Not at this time.’”

'Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.'

- Judy Garland

'The bounty of nature is also one of the deep needs of man.'

- Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007)

Mark Twain started writing 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' to distract himself.

'In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.'

-Poet Robert Frost (1874-1963)

'What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through.'

- First African American Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

Augusta Savage's masterpiece was destroyed after a limited exhibition

"Life Every Voice and Sing," sometimes called "The Harp," debuted at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Based on the James Weldon Johnson poem (and eventual unofficial Black national anthem) of the same name, the massive, 16-foot-tall sculpture depicted a kneeling Black man holding a bar of music in front of 12 chorus singers. After the fair ended in 1940, Savage was unable to pay to preserve it, so it was destroyed.

A quote by Florence Nightingale

"Poetry and imagination begin life."

'All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate … I choose love.'

-Johnny Cash (1932-2003)

After the death of jazz legend Charlie Parker, Beat Generation poet and artist Ted Joans adorned New York's walls with some of its earliest graffiti that read 'Bird lives!'

'I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.'

- Actress and singer Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

Satire often employs irony

Satirists often make their point indirectly through ironic statements, indirectly highlighting the foolishness of the thing they’re mocking. An example is Mark Twain's satirical 1882 essay, “Advice to Youth.” “Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly upon these precepts,” he wrote, “and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody else’s.”

'The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them'

- Ida B. Wells, co-founder of the NAACP (1862-1931)

'Birds Aren't Real' parodies the way memes traffic conspiracy theories

Peter McIndoe claims the US government killed 12 billion birds only to replace them with drones. These statements have powered protests—and McIndoe's fictional campaign that highlights how conspiracies and their theorists are treated.

The 'Howl' obscenity trial changed American publishing

The "Howl" obscenity trial is one of the most significant in American publishing, affirming that material with the "slightest redeeming social importance" cannot be considered "obscene." In the process, it permits artists, like Allen Ginsberg, to use the language they see fit to express themselves.

A quote by Magic Johnson

"Celebrate the life you had, not the life you could've had."

'The true measure of all our actions is how long the good in them lasts.'

- Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)