Lost City

From: The New York Times

"TIMBUKTU, Mali — When the moment of danger came, Ali Imam Ben Essayouti knew just what to do. The delicate, unbound parchment manuscripts in the 14th-century mosque he leads had already survived hundreds of years in the storied city of Timbuktu. He was not about to allow its latest invaders, Tuareg nationalist rebels and Islamic extremists from across the region, to destroy them now.
     So he gingerly bundled the 8,000 volumes in sackcloth, carefully stacked them in crates, then quietly moved them to a bunker in an undisclosed location. 'These manuscripts, they are not just for us in Timbuktu,' Mr. Essayouti said. 'They belong to all of humanity. It is our duty to save them.'”
— Linda Polgreen, The New York Times
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“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde

"Ray Bradbury says that one of the main inspirations for Fahrenheit 451 came when he was out walking with a writer friend, and 'a police car pulled up and the policeman got out and asked us 'What are you doing?' Bradbury explained that they were out walking ('putting one foot in front of the other' was his first 'smartaleck' response.) The policeman didn't like it. 'Don't do it again!' he told Bradbury – which sent the writer into such a rage that he went home and wrote the short story The Pedestrian, imagining a time in which everyone who walked was considered a criminal. Later, he took his 'midnight criminal stroller' for another walk around the future city – and Fahrenheit 451 was born."
— Sam Jordison, Guardian
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"In 1973, the Drake, North Dakota school board condemned Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, as obscene, and had copies of the book burned in the high school furnace. The author then sent a letter to the head of the school board stating, 'I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school. Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am.' "
— AssociatedContent
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