A man was walking on the beach and he noticed a boy throwing starfish back into the ocean. The man asked, why? The boy said the 'tide is out and the starfish will die.' The man said 'you can’t save all of the starfish there are miles and miles of beach.' The boy picked up a starfish and threw it into the ocean and said ‘ I made a difference for that one.’
~ Loren Eiseley 1978 Star Thrower

"Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned....I had never been so truly free in my life." - Malcolm X

"Some kids go to the library ... Others to the street. But they can't go to the libraries if the libraries are closed." - Officer Dombranski, NYPD

"Kids are living stories every day that we wouldn't let them read." -Josh Westbrook

"The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don’t have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result." - Louis Sachar

"Our schools are filled with kids who have been treated badly all their lives. They don't tell anyone, because there is shame in being treated badly. Many-girls and boys-have been sexually mistreated. Still others struggle in fear with sexual identity. They respond with eating disorders, cutting, suicidal thought or action. I can't tell you how many letters I've received from kids who found a friend in one of my books, a character who speaks to them. And if I get those letters, think of the letters Walter Dean Myers, or Lois Lowry, or Judy Blume get, thanking us for letting them know, through literature, that they are not alone. In light of all that, there's really only one thing to say to the censors. Shut up."-Chris Crutcher