Burn This Book

moment when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

is at the same time a political being, constantly aware of what goes on in the world, whether it be harrowing, bitter or sweet, and he cannot help being shaped by it.”16 Neither can the art. And there emerges Guernica.

And surely, in this moment in the history of our species, when there is such a danger of forgetting and so much inducement to forget, we must not waste our limited time here doing anything else.

the novelist is at bottom committed to a life of opposition, of speaking truth to power, of challenging and overthrowing received wisdom and disregarding the official version of everything. This is why so many novelists have been censored, imprisoned, exiled, or even killed.

For the novelist does not speak in his books for others; the novelist listens to others. Especially to those who otherwise would go unheard. The novelist does not step forward in public to be seen by others; he sees others. Especially those who otherwise would remain invisible. And by his example, as well as by the work itself, he inspires others to listen and to see.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party,

Or (more relevantly in my case, since, in my youth of boho squalor, I never did housework and had no kids and only wished I could get a job and be underpaid) it began to seem amazing how often it was assumed that having a vagina automatically meant I was less intelligent, talented, capable, and interesting than the world’s least interesting human being who happened to have a penis.

Pascal says, “When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours.”

justified because truth is trouble.

We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is jus