This generation is frightened of ideas, or at least it's being suppressed.
I mean, they censor your work when they're scared of it.
What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion.
We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.
As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literature's elementary materials.
Torch every book. Burn every page. Char every word to ash. Ideas are incombustible. And therein lies your real fear.
I do not enjoy writing at all. If I can turn my back on an idea, out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won't even reach for a pencil.
Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.
I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.
