Close ×

17 Quotes From The Best Banned Books Of All Time

17 Quotes From The Best Banned Books Of All Time

Even Harry Potter was banned once upon a time.

Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you.

— Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Cage bird Sings

Share

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

— Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

Share

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Share

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

— George Orwell, 1984 (Signet Classics)

Share

If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.

— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Share

Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won't. Or will-depending. As long as you live, there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living.

— Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

Share

I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer."

"What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?

— Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle: A Novel

Share

I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more...What I dread is the isolation. ... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready.

— Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Share

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Share

But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Share

It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.

— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

Share

I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning.

— Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

Share

But whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.

— Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Share

You're a bitter man," said Candide.
That's because I've lived," said Martin.

— Voltaire, Candide

Share

I wanted to tell him that I will never be sorry for loving him. That in a way I still do - that maybe I always will. I'll never regret one single thing we did together because what we had was very special. Maybe if we were ten years older it would have worked out differently. Maybe. I think it's just that I'm not ready for forever.

— Judy Blume, Forever . . . (Richard Jackson Book)

Share

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. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. 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 as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

— J. D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye

Share

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.

— James Joyce, Ulysses

Share