“It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written.”
As quoted in Literature for Today's Young Adults (1997) by Kenneth L. Donelson and Alleen Pace Nilsen, p. 392
Context: It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.
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Judy Blume 36
American children's writer 1938Related quotes

“The Bible is most dangerous book ever written on earth, keep it under lock and key.”
From Why You Should Never be a Christian (1987) by Ishaq 'Kunle Sanni and Dawood Ayodele Amoo.
Misattributed

As quoted in "My interview with R.A. Lafferty", by Tom Jackson, originally published in Lan's Lantern #39 (1991); here in the Sandusky Register (16 January 2015) http://www.sanduskyregister.com/story/201501160010

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 1851); published in Memories of Hawthorne (1897) by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 157
Context: In me divine magnanimities are spontaneous and instantaneous — catch them while you can. The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the Gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling — no hopelessness is in it, no despair. Content — that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.

“Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.”

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)