No one has the right to live without being shocked.

I just stumbled across Phillp Pullman: "No One Has The Right To Live Without Being Shocked" , recently.  You may already have read this, but I hadn't.

The statements were made by Pullman made on March 28 at Oxford in the defense of free speech after being challenged about the title of his novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

It was one of those things I really wish I had said.


Questioner: Mr Pullman, the title of the novel seems to an ordinary christian to be offensive.
                       To call the son of god a scoundrel is an awful thing to say.

Pullman: It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a
                 shocking thing to say.
                 
                 But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No
                 one has the right to spend their life without being
                 offended.
                 
                 Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it
                 up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it,
                 you don't have to like it.
                
                
                 And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to
                 remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can
                 complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can
                 write to the papers, you can write your own book.
                
                
                 You can do all those things, but there your rights
                 stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this
                 book. No one has the right to stop it being published, <
                 or bought, or sold or read. That's all I have to say on
                 that subject.