In the world of speeches and orations, especially historical ones, the persistent misquotation is understandable. You hear a speech. You misremember or mishear a line as something more colorful than it was.

At the end, we can embrace and love whatever we want of an author's work. But we also can't ignore a writer's express wish just because we don't happen to agree with it.

Of course, authors can still burn their manuscripts - but once something is out in the world, especially if it ever saw the digital light of day, it's harder and harder to call it back.

For as long as writers have written, they've had second thoughts about their work.

An e-book is not a physical book. That point might seem trite until you stop for a moment to think how much simpler it is, in a certain sense, to destroy electronic than physical traces.

Readers are increasingly reliant on digital sources for information - and they are increasingly reliant on these sources to be accurate.

I can understand pulling a book whose contents have been questioned - after all, false information has a way of sticking in your brain and seeming true when you go to retrieve it years later.

There will be great books. There will be great films. Sometimes, if we are lucky, the two will intersect.

Cloud Atlas' is but one of a long list of titles deemed unfilmable, by author and movie moguls alike, until it was, well, filmed.

If we rush too quickly to be scientific, to begin our experiment or catch our criminal as soon as possible, we risk never getting to the answer at all.