Printed Material Quotes

The printed page was like wine to me.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. ... Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

Digital doesn't interest me. It's too many steps removed from the actual tactile thing. I still read books. I don't read online.

By and large books are mankind's best invention.

I think the only safe medium are books, because people like to hold books in their hand.

I've got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books.

The book has had a good run. For 550 years, it was the most practical way to deliver writing to multiple readers.

I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books... If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man.

Books were put out, and 'had a run,' / Like coinage from the mint; / But which could fill the place of one, / That one they wouldn't print?

A television picture or a movie might be lost forever, but your book is waiting.

The space between the young reader’s eyeballs and the printed page is a holy place and officialdom should trample all over it at their peril.’

You mean, like a book?

Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

It seems to me the book has not just aesthetic values - the charming little clothy box of the thing, the smell of the glue, even the print, which has its own beauty. But there's something about the sensation of ink on paper that is in some sense a thing, a phenomenon rather than an epiphenomenon. I can't break the association of electric trash with the computer screen. Words on the screen give the sense of being just another passing electronic wriggle.

The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable.

Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.

A book ... unlike a television program, moving picture or any other 'modern means of communication' ... can wait for years, yet be available at any moment when it happens to be needed.

If you're going to visit and re-visit a book, it has more reason to be a real book, because of that ability to concentrate and that relationship that you build up with it, as opposed to the relationship that you build up with your screen, rewards replacement.

You're not allowed to say anything about books because they're books, and books are, you know, God.

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.

The book is the only medium left that hasn't been corrupted by the profane.

The tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It's the world's most patient medium.

It's nice to see your name in print. It's interesting.

Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time.

Yet I'm making a book and I'm going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won't believe in it and it won't be real to me until there's a finished book I can hold.