Controversial Writing Quotes

My books have all generated controversy.

I don't know why, but I always feel a kind of necessity to write things that are beyond acceptance, that are too offensive or something. For people to read them and say, Ha-ha-ha, very funny. No, we can't print that.

I wrote an article for Revolver and it was very offensive.

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

Write the unpublishable.. .and then publish it.

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

Being an author of banned books is cool, I've decided.

It's what I do well - I write about things that make people uncomfortable. That's probably the only thing I do better than my peers.

What I find cool about being a banned author is this: I'm writing books that evoke a reaction, books that, if dropped in a lake, go down not with a whimper but a splash.

When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.

When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion.

Sometimes I worry I'm writing 'Fifty Shades of Grey' for teenagers, but I'm not.

I think young writers ought to be heretical.

Much malice mingled with a little wit Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ.

'Basic Black with Pearls', upon its publication in 1980, was greeted with a mix of praise and misunderstanding. Critics sensed its daring and applauded its formal inventiveness, but those qualities also kept people at bay.

If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.

I like visceral writing that people can't help but respond to, even if they respond, and they're shocked, or they're angry, or they're offended. I think that's the only way to reach people.

Interestingly, although the 'Books of Blood' were greeted with cries of righteous horror - and smirks - I didn't think of them as being particularly excessive. God knows what I did think was excessive at the time, but I didn't think they were.

The stuff I write about doesn't, like, necessarily leave people feeling warm and fuzzy. I'm writing in a territory that's, like, contested and full of prickliness. And I find that people project their problems onto me or something.

I have written things that Republicans and Democrats and all kinds of figures have either hated or felt very uncomfortable about. Because in doing these long projects and books, you get close to the bone. And they're not calling me up and asking me for dinner.

There are some novelists who can get away with writing about sex - Philip Roth, Ian McEwan - but they are rare.

Less Than Zero and American Psycho were both really different, so I was just like, Okay, he's just really doesn't have anything pleasant to say, you know? But I get it. I get at least why it's difficult and what he's really doing.

Sometimes the books most restrained about sex, even deeply scandalized by it, can whisper to us with the greatest hidden force. I am a huge admirer of the recently deceased, always underranked Evan S. Connell.

I always used to deny this, but I guess what I'm really saying is that I was writing to shock... And I dug deep and dredged up all kinds of vile things which fascinated me at the time.

All of my books deal in a very rough, rude fashion with subjects about which there are great conflicts of opinion.