Printer’s ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.

Christopher Morley (1890-1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist, poet

The Haunted Bookshop, ch. 6 [Roger Mifflin] (1919)
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