The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us – it's a… - Ray Bradbury

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.

Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I am one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the 'guilty,' but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.

Q: What would you put on your suggested reading list? RB: All the plays of George Bernard Shaw. I go back to Shakespeare constantly. I go back to the great poets. And there are a lot of women in my life. Edith Wharton has been part of my life for at least 45 years, and she’s been discovered in the last few years because of The Age of Innocence. Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, these are all very important women writers. And then you pick up the short stories of Steinbeck and Hemingway. F. Scott Fitzgerald is certainly our greatest American writer in the last 60 years.