Quotes on Written Word

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.

I'm up to my ears in unwritten words.

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

Designers provide ways into—and out of—the flood of words by breaking up text into pieces and offering shortcuts and alternate routes through masses of information. (...) Although many books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design’s most humane functions is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

The written word endures, the spoken word disappears