A Quote by Tom Chatfield

Above all, the translation of books into digital formats means the destruction of boundaries. Bound, printed texts are discrete objects: immutable, individual, lendable, cut off from the world.

Tom Chatfield

Quote Topics

Above Books Bound Boundaries Cut Destruction Digital Discrete Formats Immutable Individual Means Objects Off Printed Texts Translation World

Quote Author

Tom Chatfield
British - Author
Born: 1980

The Bodleian Library, next to the Sheldonian, is one of the great libraries of the world. As well as holding most of the books printed in England since the first quarter of the 17th century, it houses priceless printed texts, manuscripts, and collections.

Justin Cartwright

A book , once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, both grammatically and actually, whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it.

James Branch Cabell

I also eschew the identity of "puppeteer" it is a concept that blurs the boundaries of discrete objects and persons. I do think Anarchist Nihilist Puppet Show is my day job.

Kalan Sherrard

All that are printed and bound are not books; they do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thousand disguises.

Henry David Thoreau

I'm not a collector. I don't keep letters, or books, or souvenirs. But I do keep one copy of each translation of my books into a foreign language. Have you ever seen a murder story printed in Singhalese? Wow!

Rex Stout

We want to tell unique, individual, discrete stories with a unique and discrete individual point of view.

Travis Knight

Some day, as soon as a book is printed it will be simultaneously put into digital form. That will be a wonderful research tool, but it will never substitute for holding the book. I feel certain that at least within my lifetime, everyone will still be going to the bookstore and buying printed books. Thank God I'll die before I have to worry about whether the printed book itself will disappear. That's something I don't want to live to see.

Anne Fadiman

We'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortar libraries.

Marilyn Johnson

The printed word will be around long after many of our digital creations are gone, either because books don't require monthly hosting, and blogs and websites do... or because the languages and platforms for which a particular digital creation was published will become obsolete.

Jeffrey Zeldman

If you look at photographers who say, "I hate digital photography," they all use Photoshop, even if it's to make the sky just a little more blue than it was. Manipulation is very discrete and because it's so discrete nobody cares about it anymore. People accept manipulated photographs, I think.

Thomas Ruff

I'm only a novelist on occasion. Many of my books are made up of brief texts collected together, short stories, or else they are books that have an overall structure but are composed of various texts.

Italo Calvino

Digital texts are all well and good, but books on shelves are a presence in your life. As such, they become a part of your day-to-day existence, reminding you, chastising you, calling to you. Plus, book collecting is, hands down, the greatest pastime in the world.

Michael Dirda

I don't speak any languages well enough to make an expert assessment on writing in translation, but since I'm interested in awkwardness in prose, I find I like the way translated texts can sometimes acquire awkwardness in the process of translation. There's a discordance translation can create which I think is sometimes seen as a weakness but which I think can be a really interesting aspect of the text.

Katie Kitamura

The digital formats keep changing so rapidly. I feel like so many people are shooting digital but the quality is being lost. There's a texture and a richness to the 35 format that's incomparable.

Daryl Wein

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.