Don DeLillo Quotes

I have had fatwas issued against me, some three in Bangladesh and another five in India. I will not be cowed by these threats and shall fight for my rights.

If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.

Salman Rushdie, indeed any writer who abuses the prophet or indeed any prophet under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death.

This was but a prelude; where books are burnt human-beings will be burnt in the end

I am persecuted because of my writings, I think, therefore, that I should write some more.

Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail.

Censorship is a strange situation. There was times when people would burn books because they didn't like what people were doing.

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

People are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

Many who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lamppost.

Mr. Greene. Some parts of your book are certain to offend some Catholics, but you should pay no attention to that.

People have a right to say what they want without being killed. These Islamic groups have to be stopped. I just can't sit down and do nothing.

There is social intimidation by the self-appointed brigades of the thought police… they exist in every society, whether they are of the religious, nationalistic or atheistic variety. Dogmatists, who are convinced that they know better, that only the way they think is acceptable and who would deprive others of their right to hear differing and discordant voices.. They try to achieve this by either silencing the author or scaring away the public.

Sometimes it’s a short step from banning to burning.

That was only the beginning - where one burns books, one will finally also burn people.

Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool?

Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.

Rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author Salman Rushdie, I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

We've seen the uproars around the world concerning cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad. Anyone who does not think comic strips are relevant never had a fatwa put on him/her for drawing a picture.

My books were attacked constantly by the Communist Party for not hewing to the Party line. I have never hewed to a Party line of any kind.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

The more words we are allowed to take, the freer we become. If our mouth is banned, then we attempt to assert ourselves through gestures, even objects. They are more difficult to interpret, and take time before they arouse suspicion.

I had life threats, because people accused me of approaching Brando as God and his son was Jesus. I literally had people saying my blood would run in the streets for doing that.