Challenged Books Quotes

If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently ... As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them."
[Bangor Daily News, Guest Column of March 20, 1992] ~ Stephen King

One of the seminar organizers joins me. "Is Yvonne giving you a hard time?" Yvonne. My nemesis is none other than the cadaver beheader. As if turns out, she's also the lab manager, the person responsible when things go wrong, such as writers fainting and/or getting sick to their stomach and then going home and writing books that refer to anatomy lab managers as beheaders. ~ Mary Roach

You're just a character in my dream."
"You wish."
"I didn't mean my love interest," she replied defensively. "You'd have better hair. You're the character I dreamed up because the rest of the dream was making me homesick."
"Maybe you're the character I dreamed up to scare myself awake."
"That's not very nice!"
"You made fun of my hair. I like it this way. Short and simple."
I don't mind short. Mine is short."
"Then what's wrong with mine?" Jason challenged.
"Maybe we should talk about something else."
"Like the guy on a horse coming to kill us?"
"It needs more style," she muttered.
"The horse?"
"Your hair."
"I forgot to bring my gel when I got eaten by a hippo. ~ Brandon Mull

Are there weapons in a bookstore?'
'It's a store full of books, which are objects that can be thrown as well as read,' Monty replied blandly.
The Crows cocked his head. 'I had no idea you humans lived with so much danger. ~ Anne Bishop

We, the one's who are challenged, need to be heard. To be seen not as a disability, but as a person who has, and will continue to bloom. To be seen not only as a handicap, but as a well intact human being. ~ Robert M. Hensel

I had books and music and the ocean to swim in. ~ Kim Harrington

The model of the educational Kalila Wa-Dimna. These are books of instruction to rulers and humans. The stories unfold a range of human psychology, a vast range of human psychology. The Sultan is being moved from his narrow and bigoted position into a wider, more subtle, more nuanced understanding of human experiences. ~ Marina Warner

The great thing about literature is that it's subjective. No two readers read the same book, because we all see the words through different eyes, filter the story through different life experiences. ~ Lisa Wingate

My favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'. ~ James Patterson

Sir, I've known him ever since he was born! We've played snowball, and built snow-houses together, which are called igloos, and once, when one of Santa's reindeer was sick on Christmas Eve, Snow Bear stepped in to help with the presents, and load them on the sleigh - he's very kind, and clever, and strong, you know. ~ Suzy Davies

Some books don't answer the inside, I read one comic called Ms.Marvel!
Under Marvel can be understand that this person is powerful and can handle a lot of stuff, but reality this wasn't a powerful one or one strong. This guy was a guy who just called the Avengers like Iron Man for help! ~ Deyth Banger

Television and film are our libraries now. Our history books. ~ David Strathairn

A tear slipped from eye, as I stood helpless beside Kiran. "They have done nothing wrong, except fight for the freedom you have stolen from them, from all of us!" I shouted back, unable to stay silent when my friends stood at his mercy.
"I give you freedom, the freedom to live your life as you please," Lucan challenged, tilting his chin with pride and sincerity. "I ask nothing of you, except for your loyalty. I am the king, it is the least of what I deserve," Lucan turned to address the kingdom, his argument ringing through the air.
"Then why is it only your bloodline that is allowed immortality?" I argued, taking a step forward. "Why do the rest of our people suffer from the separation of races? Why are the Shape-shifters exiled by penalty of death? What have they done? What is their crime? Are you afraid to share true immortality? Are you so scared of a people that realize they don't need a king?" I turned to face the crowd too, hoping to empower them with my words. ~ Rachel Higginson

As a mere mortal with thirty years of earthly wanderings, I have found books to be the most significant of my findings. ~ The Raveness

If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success? ~ Jerry Seinfeld

Sarah turned her narrow-eyed gaze on him, making me glad once more that Antimony's comic books got it wrong, and telepaths can't actually kill you with their brains. Give you a whopping headache and earworm you with annoying jingles, yes; kill you, no. (Although sometimes, when she's managed to stick "The Happy Banana Song" in my head for a week, I sort of wish she could kill people with her brain. It would be kinder.) ~ Seanan McGuire

Buying, borrowing, or stealing the book is the easy part. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Having big audiences when you're on a book tour is like Valhalla if you're a person who used to sell Girl Scout cookies on the side. Because you want to give the reading that will sell the most books. ~ Eileen Myles

It took me eight books to finally be at a point in my career where I could come out with a book and say, 'This is meant to be a funny book,' and we didn't have to make any bones about it. ~ John Scalzi

All told, she owned fourteen books, but she saw her story as being made up predominantly of ten of them. Of those ten, six were stolen, one showed up at the kitchen table, two were made for her by a hidden Jew, and one was delivered by a soft, yellow-dressed afternoon. ~ Markus Zusak

While books provided me with some escape from the mental and physical horrors of my early life, they were unreliable. Many times the protagonists suffered terribly and then died at the end. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for. ~ Umberto Eco

If cissexual academics truly believe that transsexual and intersex people can add new perspectives to existing dialogues about gender, then they should stop reinterpreting our experiences and instead support transsexual and intersex intellectual endeavors and works of art. Instead of exploiting our experiences to further their own careers, they should insist that their universities make a point of hiring transsexual and intersex faculty, and that their publishers put out books by gender-variant writers. And they should finally acknowledge the fact that they have no legitimate claim to use transsexual and intersex identities, struggles, and histories for their own purposes. ~ Julia Serano

That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we can all talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves. ~ Will Schwalbe

It must be a really great book because one can read it as a boy in one way, and then re-read it in middle life and get something very different out of it - and that to my mind is one of the best tests. ~ C.S. Lewis

Laurie welcomes ALL Reviews from readers, and will supply an e-book version of the books listed. ~ Laurie Bowler

Batman: One more thing. When you find something out, you can call me on this.
Commissioner Gordan: A cell phone with one button?
Batman: A bat signal.
Commissioner Gordan: Christ. He actually put a bat on it. ~ Geoff Johns

Duke Hwan and the Wheelwright (an excerpt)

The world values books, and thinks that in so doing it is valuing Tao. But books contain words only. And yet there is something else which gives value to the books. Not the words only, nor the thought in the words, but something else within the thought, swinging it in a certain direction that words cannot apprehend.

But it is the words themselves that the world values when it commits them to books: and though the world values them, these words are worthless as long as that which gives them value is not held in honor.

That which man apprehends by observation is only outward form and colour, name and noise: and he thinks that this will put him in possession of Tao. Form and color, name and sound, do not reach to reality. That is why: "He who knows does not say, he who says, does not know."

How then is the world going to know Tao through words? ~ Thomas Merton

The fear of failure is so great, it is no wonder that the desire to do right by one's children has led to a whole library of books offering advice on how to raise them. ~ Bruno Bettelheim

The Roman Catholic Index of Prohibited Books, a list that came to include almost every significant work of post-medieval Western philosophy. ~ David Hume

They belong to their readers now, which is a great thing–because the books are more powerful in the hands of my readers than they could ever be in my hands. ~ John Green

Books are supposed to remind you that life is hard for everyone. That other people have it even worse than you. I know you know, that because you love reading as much as I do. ~ Leah Konen

Tip 7. Read good books until the characters in each story run from you in terror. ~ James W. Lewis

If you sell, say, two thousand copies, it is the same thing as if you had sold nothing at all because two thousand is too vast - I mean, for the imagination to grasp. While thirty-seven people - perhaps thirty-seven are too many, perhaps seventeen would have been better or even seven - but still thirty-seven are still within the scope of one's imagination. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Publicity doesn't work for books. It really doesn't. All it does is get your name in front of a reader who might then glance at your book. Or not. ~ Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I've had journals ever since I was really little. Sometimes I write poems and stuff, but for the most part I write down what happens to me during the day that I don't want to forget. So I have books filled with little things like that. ~ Miranda Cosgrove

My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books. ~ Tony Judt

I love the way that each book - any book - is its own journey. You open it, and off you go ... . ~ Sharon Creech

The thing about books was, the more you read and liked them, the more you wanted to have on hand to read. Before you knew it you needed more bookshelves, and then all of the sudden they filled your house. ~ Sui Ishida

Lovely and unremarkable, the clutter
of mugs and books, the almost-empty Fig
Newtons box, thick dishes in a big
tin tray, the knife still standing in the butter,
change like the color of river water
in the delicate shift to day. Thin fog
veils the hedges, where a neighbor dog
makes rounds. 'Go to bed. It doesn't matter
about the washing-up. Take this book along.'
Whatever it was we said that night is gone,
framed like a photograph nobody took.
Stretched out on a camp cot with the book,
I think that we will talk all night again,
there, or another where, but I am wrong. ~ Marilyn Hacker

Of the female black authors, I really like Morrison's early books a lot. But she's really become so much a clone of Faulkner. He did it better. ~ Leslie Fiedler