Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

Barnaby on why reading a book is easier than having a conversation:

The holes in writing provided by punctuation put themselves in conversations in the form of invitations to join, these are pauses and gestures and direct questions like, 'What do you think?' It looks to me like it's easier to pick up a book than it is to join a conversation and it's easier to leave a conversation than put down a book because though a conversation is only ever there at a certain time, a book is available for starting any time (though no less can you start a book with no holes than you can finish it) and that a conversation is in this way a book turned inside-out. A conversation with only two people is easy enough because holes are necessary for both of you, else the conversation dies without ever having been anything. But a conversation with two people with those holes intended at those two people can easily enough keep anyone else out through providing no more holes and presenting the third party with this impossibility.