14 Quotes from Censored Authors

4 Quotes From Censored Authors

By TOM BLUNT

September 26, 2016

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“Santo Domingo y los albigenses” by Pedro Berruguete
EDITOR'S NOTE:
If you’re stirred by these banned books quotes, browse through our author quotes archive for more.Banned Books Week is basically an annual celebration of our society’s failures to uphold free speech. By looking back at what was once deemed too hot, heavy, or dangerous for public consumption, we see how much work there is to do in the present to preserve that freedom: every year more and more authors are stepping forward with challenging ideas that someone else wants to keep you from hearing about.Barnes & NobleIndieboundAmazoniBooksAnd you know what? They have their reasons. Censorship isn’t a one-sided affair, people all over the political spectrum can find themselves in a panic over what information is disseminated, and how. Wikipedia’s current list of the most commonly challenged library books serves as a veritable Who’s Who of literary heroes, anti-heroes, and outright villains (and where else are you going to see Mein Kampf, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Captain Underpants all on a list together?).Below you’ll find some of the naughty bits that have kept books like these in the line of fire, in some cases for almost a century. An author wrote them, an editor edited them, a publisher published them — and then for whatever reason, all hell broke loose.Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book, 1971
“If shoplifting food seems easy, it’s nothing compared to the snatching of clothing. Shop only the better stores. Try things on in those neat little secluded stalls. The less bulky items, such as shirts, vests, belts and socks can be tied around your waist or leg with large rubber bands if needed.”E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey, 2011
“Christian squirts baby oil into his hand and then rubs my behind with careful tenderness — from makeup remover to soothing balm for a spanked ass, who would have thought it was such a versatile liquid.”Julius Lester, Look Out, Whitey! Back Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama!, 1968
“The old order passes away. Like the black riderless horse, boots turned wrong way in the stirrups, following the coffin down the boulevard, it passes away. But there are no crowds to watch as it passes. There are no crowds, to mourn, to weep. No eulogies to read and no eternal flame is lit over the grave. There is no time, for there are streets to be cleaned, houses painted, and clothes washed. Everything must be scoured clean. Trash has to be thrown out. Garbage dumped and everything unfit, burned.”The new order is coming, child.
The old is passing away.”Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 1968
“But in July of 1964, not even the hip world of New York was quite ready for the phenomenon of a bunch of people roaring across the continental USA in a bus covered with swirling Day-Glo mandalas aiming movie cameras and microphones at every freaking thing in this whole freaking country, while Neal Cassady wheeled the bus around the high curves like Super Hud and the US nation streamed across the windshield like one of those goddamned Cinemascope landscape cameras that winds up your optic nerves like the rubber band in a toy airplane and let us now be popping more speed and smoking grass as if it were all just coming out of Cosmo the Prankster god’s own local-option gumball machines…”William Powell, The Anarchist Cookbook, 1971
“You must always have a secret plan. Everything depends on this: it is the only question. So as not to be conquered by the conquered territory in which you lead your life, so as not to feel the horrible weight of inertia wrecking your will and bending you to the ground, so as not to spend a single night more wondering what there is to do or how to connect with your neighbors and countrymen, you must make secret plans without respite.”Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1961
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 1927
“We fucked a flame into being.”Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925
“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, 1959
“Naked Mr. America, burning frantic with self bone love, screams out: ‘My asshole confounds the Louvre! I fart ambrosia and shit pure gold turds! My cock spurts soft diamonds in the morning sunlight!'”Grace Metalious, Peyton Place, 1956
“Give me a child until he is seven, thought Tom, and he is forever after mine. When the Fascists say it, they’re bums and kidnappers, but when the Church says it, it is known as putting a kid on the right track.”Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969
“The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose.”David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing, 2013
“We gather the things we learned, and they don’t nearly add up to fill the space of a life.
You will miss the taste of Froot Loops.
You will miss the sound of traffic.
You will miss your back against his.
You will miss him stealing the sheets.
Do not ignore these things.”Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, 1910
“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”