Ann Patchett

Book banning now means one person in the state of Florida who doesn't have any children at all can call a school and say,

I don't think they should teach Paradise Lost.

And so they pull it off the shelf pending review, pending a group of people who are going to sit down in Florida and read Paradise Lost and make a decision.

Guess what?

That's just not going to happen.

And so all these books are getting pulled.

It's just a ridiculous waste of time because it's not addressing the problem.

The problem is what do children have to fear?

Not Paradise Lost.

Children have to fear gun violence.

Children have to fear the things that they can so easily get on their phones.

Pornography, for example.

But no one's going to take away their phones or their guns because we don't ban things we love.

We feel like we have to ban something to show that we're concerned citizens, and then we ban books.

So from a distance, everything looks absolutely cataclysmically awful.

Up close, it can look pretty good.

in that people are kind.

People come into the bookstore all day long and I see them interested in reading but also interested in one another, really nice to the staff.

I don't know.

I see so much goodness in the world.