“Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.”

“But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions.”

“Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.”

“Mama and Papa are more to blame (for delinquency) than the kids; parents should stay home and raise their children and spend less time in taverns. ”

“Oliver clapped his hands together, grinning broadly. "Hallelujah. You have no idea how sick I am of high school. Watch out, Jackson High: This truant is about to become a dropout.”

“Escapism sold books, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were sold by exposing America’s flaws and making the average American reader (and book club member) look closely at his or her most cherished social assumptions. Americans might not be eager to accept integration, feminism, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, and the drug culture– or to shoulder the blame for the existence of these problems– but they were certainly willing to read about them.”