...a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.

Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.

The face of Asia was changed dramatically for the better.

Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.

Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation.

Movable type seemed magical to the monks who were illuminating manuscripts and copying texts. Certainly e-books seem magical to me.