Book Banning Quotes

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book. ~ Walt Whitman

Did you ever hear anyone say, 'That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me'? ~ Joseph Henry Jackson

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. ~ Mark Twain

The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Here is how I propose to end book-banning in this country once and for all: Every candidate for school committee should be hooked up to a lie detector and asked this question: "Have you read a book from start to finish since high school?" or "Did you even read a book from start to finish in high school?"

If the truthful answer is "no," then the candidate should be told politely that he cannot get on the school committee and blow off his big bazoo about how books make children crazy.

Whenever ideas are squashed in this country, literate lovers of the American experiment write careful and intricate explanations of why all ideas must be allowed to live. It is time for them to realize that they are attempting to explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans.

From now on, I intend to limit my discourse with dimwitted Savonarolas to this advice: "Have somebody read the First Amendment to the United States Constitution out loud to you, you God damned fool!"

Well--the American Civil Liberties Union or somebody like that will come to the scene of trouble, as they always do. They will explain what is in the Constitution, and to whom it applies.

They will win.

And there will be millions who are bewildered and heartbroken by the legal victory, who think some things should never be said--especially about religion.

They are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hi ho. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas. ~ Pete Hautman

Retain the Knowledge; Return the Book ~ Culver-Stockton Library Staff

I am happiest as a set of eyes, and my goal whenever I go into a movie or album or book is to lose myself in the story and find myself on the way out. ~ Tavi Gevinson

So the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for, and sometimes winning and sometimes losing, the fight for First Amendment rights in comics and, more generally, for freedom of speech. ~ Neil Gaiman

In March 2008, the Al-Arabiya news channel denounced my book The Truth about Muhammad, claiming that it contained "lies and hate." Its article quoted the Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong as saying that the book was "written in hatred" and contains "basic and bad mistakes of fact."8 The jihad terror group Hamas soon joined in the denunciation, thundering that my book was not just full of "lies," but was actually part of a "campaign by Western extremists against the religion of Islam and values that are sacred to Moslems," and was "another in a series of actions designed to distort the image of Islam in the public eye."9 ~ Robert Spencer

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Um, yeah. I guess lying around reading books all day doesn't do much for physical endurance. ~ Amy Plum

My dad was in the Swedish armed forces, he was always reading up on different weapons from the Americans and Soviets. When I was a kid, I was in bed looking at his books, reading about the Red Army. So I was very aware of it. I had an interest in military matters ever since. ~ Dolph Lundgren

I recently discovered that a friend who was re-reading Bleak House had done no other Dickens apart from Barnaby Ridge. That's just weird. I shamed and nagged him into picking up Great Expectations instead. But when I tried to recall anything about it other than its excellence, I failed. Maybe there was something about a peculiar stepfather? Or was that This Boy's Life? And I realized that, as this is true of just about every book I consumed between the ages of, say fifteen to forty, I havent even read the books I think I've read. I can't tell you how depressing this is. What's the fucking point? ~ Nick Hornby

Dreams are illustrations ... from the book your soul is writing about you. ~ Marsha Norman

And so to read is, in truth, to be in the constant act of creation. The old lady on the bus with her Orwell, the businessman on the Tube with Patricia Cornwell, the teenager roaring through Capote -- they are not engaged in idle pleasure. Their heads are on fire. Their hearts are flooding. With a book, you are the landscape, the sets, the snow, the hero, the kiss -- you are the mathematical calculation the plots the trajectory of the blazing, crashing zeppelin. You -- pale, punchable reader -- are terraforming whole worlds in your head, which will remain with you until the day you die. These books are as much a part of you as your guts and your bone. And when your guts fail and your bones break, Narnia, or Jamaica Inn, or Gormenghast will still be there; as pin-sharp and bright as the day you first imagined them -- hiding under the bedclothes, sitting on the bus. Exhausted, on a rainy day, weeping over the death of someone you never met, and who was nothing more than words until you transformed them with your time, and your love, and the imagination you constantly dismiss as "just being a bit of a bookworm. ~ Caitlin Moran

I grew up surfing on the north coast of New South Wales, and on most of the beaches, women never wore tops. When we were 10 or 11, me and my mates couldn't drive, so they'd take us surfing and then sit on the beach topless and read a book. I don't know if I quite saw them sexually, but there was physical intrigue. ~ Simon Baker

Write the book the way it should be written, then give it to somebody to put in the commas and shit. ~ Elmore Leonard

The only thing worse than not reading a book in the last ninety days is not reading a book in the last ninety days and thinking that it doesn't matter ~ Jim Rohn

Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself. ~ Richard Cecil

With no sums to keep his conscience at bay, the black book loomed large, creeping into his line of sight.
He scanned the room for something else to do. The harness still needed work. And he'd been meaning to fix that rickety shelf since last month. The pipe on his potbellied stove was dented. The windowsill needed dusting.
Dusting?
J.T. braced his arms on the desk and pressed his forehead into the heels of his hands. ~ Karen Witemeyer

At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about. ~ Elmore Leonard

Carver's best book yet! FROM A CHANGELING STAR combines deft characterization and fascinating extrapolation into a complex, compulsively readable thriller. I wish all science fiction novels could be this good. ~ Craig Shaw Gardner

How can you get rid of a book? That's like throwing away knowledge. ~ Freida McFadden

What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation. ~ Lawrence Clark Powell

In a good book the best is between the lines. ~ Swedish Proverb

We only pay for what we admire, want and recognize as necessary, even when a cup of coffee is priced at the same value of a book that can change our entire future. ~ Robin Sacredfire

I can only describe it as: the whole experience was imprinted on my body. And when I started to write it, it just came from such a very, In The Body of the Worldvery physical ... it just came from my body. I don't know how to explain it better than that. I guess my head was transmitting it. It was a very, very physical experience writing this book. ~ Eve Ensler

There is no man who has not some interesting associations with particular scenes, or airs, or books, and who does not feel their beauty or sublimity enhanced to him by such connections. ~ Sir Archibald Alison, 2nd Baronet

Get back in the box. Set it for home, present day. Go see your mom. Bring your dad. Have dinner, the three of you. Go find The Woman You Never Married and see if she might want to be The Woman You Are Going To Marry Someday. Step out of this box. Pop open the hatch. The forces within the chronohydraulic air lock will equalize. Step out into the world of time and risk and loss again. Move forward, into the emily plane. Find the book you wrote, and read it until the end, but don't turn the last page yet, keep stalling, see how long you can keep expanding the infinitely expandable moment. Enjoy the elastic present, which can accommodate as little or as much as you want to put in there. Stretch it out, live inside of it. ~ Charles Yu

She pulsed, invisibly, like a quasar. I can't describe women, but if you know Duke Pearson's 'After the rain', she was as beautiful and pure as that. Real things had happened to her to make her how she was and I wanted to know them, and read them, like a book. ~ David Mitchell

Somebody's boring me. I think it's me. ~ Dylan Thomas

There are a lot of people out there who think that I am their worst enemy, and I don't even care if these people exist. ~ Boyd Rice

Geographically the island had dramatic coastline of secret coves and forests. It was surrounded by water of turquoise color and reef. It had rich, fertile lands and a very hot temperature all year round. All year the temperature averaged 105 degrees. It got a bit cooler at night but people could still sleep under the stars and sky. It had very little rainfall and no snow or frost. Temperatures dropped a little in the winter". ~ Annette J. Dunlea

The world is a book. Some words stand out from the page. ~ Mike Carey

Civilized beings regard the act of intercourse as the highest expression of romantic love. One need only observe the behavior of animals, however, to realize that the act is often a form of violence. ~ Fiona Paul

It is a most gratifying sign of the rapid progress of our time that our best text-books become antiquated so quickly. ~ Theodor Billroth

We get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books- theoretically at least. ~ Mark Twain

My folks wouldn't read a book if you put a gun to their dicks. but they read people all day long and always get it right. ~ Pat Conroy

I like all things grammatical, and I had already written several books about parts of speech, and even the alphabet, so everything that makes up a sentence and even a word was covered except for punctuation. ~ Brian P. Cleary

To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients. The greatest knowledge of all time should be available ... in a book that would be a monument, not merely a coffin. ~ Manly Hall

How often does it happen that an obscure line finds its way into a periodical ... is requoted in every book that comes out during the next three months, and sleeps again! ~ Samuel Laman Blanchard

Our city is open to the world, and we have no periodical deportations in order to prevent people observing or finding out secret which might be of military advantage to the enemy. This is because we rely, not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty. -146 ~ Thucydides

I just think structure can make a book feel so much bigger. It's the architecture. You could use flimsy materials if you wanted to, even, but it could still feel big. ~ Jami Attenberg

The strong times, the weak times
they all come in waves. Trust me, none of us has it together. ~ Timothy James Beck