Helen Fielding Quotes

I have been told by a member of the board of one of Canada's most prominent literary magazines that a submission of mine once caused a great deal of controversy.

I think good books have to make a few people angry.

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

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

I've got a big, long list of stuff you're entitled to hate about my books.

There's always going to be controversy when you write the way I write.

I love it when my books cause controversy, when people argue violently about the ending.

It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.

One of the disconcerting things about writing for publication is that you're trying to clear your little parcel of land in a field where Taste is king - and, as we all know, there's no accounting for Taste.

You know, everybody believes in free speech until you start questioning them about it.

I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.

In America we don’t apologize for opinions, that’s why we have a 1st Amendment. If we can’t discuss even controversial opinions in the pages of our newspapers, where are we going to do it?

People like to quiet the speech of others.

'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.

I'm thinking of sending out censorship packets: information to share with those who want to defend my books when they come under fire. I'll tell why I wrote them and include reviews and letters of support from children and their parents.

If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.

The publishing of a book is a worldwide event. The attempt to suppress a book is a worldwide event.

A long, negative review I wrote of Rushdie's novel 'Fury' earned me a rebuke from the writer: He told an administrator at the college where I teach, and who had invited Rushdie to come speak, that he wouldn't share the stage with me.

I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.

Homo-sexuals should not be censored, but neither should those who oppose their point of view. That's called free speech.

Dr. Calder [a Unitarian minister] said of Dr. [Samuel] Johnson on the publications of Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi, that he was like Actaeon, torn to pieces by his own pack.

I like the free-speech stuff, the political-correctness stuff.

When you publish a book, you do so in part to end the silence. All censorship is silence. I would never, as an author, feel right requiring a young person whose family would object to the book to read it. Just as I would never force that person to read it, I would ask those folks to not force others not to read it. To me, that is just good manners.

Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.

The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.