Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness. Robert Bringhurst More Quotes by Robert Bringhurst More Quotes From Robert Bringhurst By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well. Robert Bringhurst typographyi-hate-youmean Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form. Robert Bringhurst typographycraftslanguage Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its heartwood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage, of the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source of true delight, true knowledge, true surprise. Robert Bringhurst independenthandsyears The claim that myth is always a narrative spin-off of ritual; the claim that myth is the projection of human anxieties onto a cosmological scrim; the claim that myths are invented to give sanction to human predilections and institutions... These are ways of trivializing a mode of thought that has served humanity well for a very long time. Robert Bringhurst anxietygivinglong When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how? Robert Bringhurst writingpeoplethinking Typography exists to honor content. Robert Bringhurst typographydesignhonor In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles. Robert Bringhurst horsejobsbook We're into the era of desktop bureaucracy, where people sit at computers building websites and analyzing data rather than listening or reading. Robert Bringhurst readinglisteningpeople Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time. Robert Bringhurst durabilitydesignlanguage Essay on Adam" There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell. Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four: he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him. Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam. The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth, fear, we have tried and found useless. The fifth, nothing happened, is dull. The choice is between: he jumped or was pushed. And the difference between these is only an issue of whether the demons work from the inside out or from the outside in: the one theological question. Robert Bringhurst differencessimpletwo Space in typography is like time in music. It is infinitely divisible, but a few proportional intervals can be much more useful than a limitless choice of arbitrary quantities. Robert Bringhurst arbitraryspacechoices Russian literature, like colonial Canadian literature, comes with a lot of landscape backdrop. Robert Bringhurst russian-literatureliterature If you divide the world into them and us, and history into ours and theirs, or if you think of history as something only you and your affiliates possess, then no matter what you know, no matter how noble your intentions, you have taken one step toward the destruction of the world. Robert Bringhurst takenpeacethinking Stories are the reproductive organs of language. Robert Bringhurst organslanguagestories I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph. Robert Bringhurst togetherlongthinking My own view is that violence is a part of classical Haida literature - and of every mythology everywhere, so far as I can tell - because it's part of life itself. In the world of the hamburger stand and the supermarket, or the vegan café and the ashram, you might try to tell yourself it's possible to be nonviolent. In a hunting and gathering society, violence is more difficult to hide. Robert Bringhurst huntingliteraturetrying Drop a word in the ocean of meaning and concentric ripples form. To define a single word means to try to catch those ripples. No one’s hands are fast enough. Robert Bringhurst oceanmeanhands The first function of violence in Native American literatures is simply to acknowledge that violence is implicit, like gravity and sunlight, in the world and our relations with the world. Robert Bringhurst violenceliteraturenative-american Nature, or the world, or reality, is what mythology is all about. Robert Bringhurst mythologyrealityworld When you die, your culture takes you in, and then, if you've given enough, your place is near the centre. Robert Bringhurst givenenoughculture
