The invention of printing did away with anonymity, fostering ideas of literary fame and the habit of considering intellectual effort as private prope… - Marshall McLuhan

The celebrated earthy tactility of Rabelais is a massive backwash of receding manuscript culture. (p. 170)

The reader is the content of any poem or of the language he employs, and in order to use any of these forms, he must put them on.

The person who falls suddenly experiences immunity to all pain or sensory stimuli because the central nervous system has to be protected from any intense thrust of sensation. Only gradually does he regain normal sensitivity to sights and sounds, at which time he may begin to tremble and perspire and to react as he would have done if the central nervous system had been prepared in advance for the fall that occurred unexpectedly.