We won’t tell if you won’t… It’s Banned Books Week! In honor of our favorite scandalous literary works, we selected some poignant quotes from five books that have been banned over the years. To find out more on Banned Books Week, read about it here.

 

 

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
― Ray BradburyFahrenheit 451

 

 

 

 

“Well…,” Jonas had to stop and think it through. “If everything’s the  same, then there are no choices! I want to wake up in the morning  and DECIDE things! A blue tunic, or a red one?”

― Lois LowryThe Giver

 

 

 

 

“But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow  it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn’t really about  who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it  isn’t about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it’s  about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same  thing.”

― Margaret AtwoodThe Handmaid’s Tale

 

 

 

“All right then,” said the savage defiantly, I’m claiming the right to  be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the  right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to  eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen  tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every  kind.”
There was a long silence.
“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.”
― Aldous HuxleyBrave New World

 

 

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior… Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

― J.D. SalingerThe Catcher in the Rye