Last weekend The Guardian ran a series on "Dangerous Books." The series kicked off with an article from Nicky Parker of Amnesty International, articles and interviews from controversial authors like Neil Gaiman, Melvin Burgess, Dav Pilkey, Julie Mayhew, and Azar Nafisi rounded out the series.
Here is a sample of great quotes from the series:
"Books are small, but they're dangerous, no doubt about it. Otherwise they wouldn't be censored, banned or removed."
"Why books are small but dangerous," Nicky Parker, The Guardian
"I definitely haven't been traumatised for life and I'm not entirely sure if the subversive element made things enjoyable. Except possibly in Chaucer and The Bible, where you're actually discovering murder and masturbation – and you're going this is cool, this is subversive, because it's the stuff they want us to read and they seem to have forgotten that it's filled with stuff that they don't want us to read."
"Neil Gaiman: 'my parents didn't have any kind of rules about what I couldn't read'," Neil Gaiman and Frances Myatt, The Guardian
"This is the magic of books which are read first and foremost for the pure and sensual joy of reading, of discovering, of unexpected adventures in unknown places, satisfying our curiosity and giving us the gift of true empathy. Reading offers us a unique kind of joy, that of being simultaneously private while sharing a communal experience. You can, without leaving that small space in a corner of your room, travel to numerous places, move back and forth in time, meet many different people, and connect to millions of other readers whom you have never met and might never meet in person."
"Azar Nafisi on why we need to cherish rather than ban books," Azar Nafisi, The Guardian
For more, see The Guardian's collection of notable quotes about "dangerous books."
We close with a quote from Melvin Burgess:
"Every single time a book gets banned is absurd."
"Why Melvin Burgess's ‘dangerous' books aren't dangerous at all," Patrick Sproull and Melvin Burgess, The Guardian
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