Hello everyone! I’m back from WisCon. Posting recommences. I have a backlog of personal stuff to take care of, so no reviews for a bit. Instead, it’s quote day. If you’re a teen who is running your reading choices by your parents, grow up. If you’re a parent who feels compelled to approve your child’s reading, shut up. The books and the kids are all right. – Roger Sutton, editor of The Horn Book Magazine, writing on their blog.

We do this because we have to, because our stories still need to be told. – Tony Valenzuela, director of the Lambda Literary Foundation.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political…

Starting today Read Irresponsibly will periodically include epigraphs. I’m a huge fan of the pithy quotes that appear in books. Some of the ones here will have been actual epigraphs. Others will just be cool things I’ve read. Many will be related to the act of reading. They may or may not include an explanation for why I selected it. Think of this as my quote of the day feature, except not daily. The first one is a quote from Cesar Chavez, the great labor leader. Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who…