We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.

Writing things down is dangerous. Ink can’t be erased without leaving a mess behind.

It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written.
A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence.

Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive. — William Carlos Williams, Paterson. (New Directions; Revised Edition edition April 17, 1995) Originally published 1946.

Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.

What you have not published, you can destroy. The word once sent forth can never be recalled.

Only the hand that erases
can write the true thing.

If Providence erases, it is no doubt in order to write.

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can't erase it.

One ruins the mind with too much writing. — One rusts it by not writing at all.

And I’ll go on erasing the faulty words I put in my whole, even if my whole is left without words.

Often must you turn your pencil to erase, if you hope to write something worth a second reading.

When I erase a word with a pencil, where does it go?

Unfortunately, buildings are not like drawings. You can't just erase them. (p.275)