Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

Burnett’s line underscores the permanence and autonomy that language can acquire once it leaves the speaker’s control and enters print. Printed words circulate beyond their original moment, audience, and intent; they can be excerpted, recontextualized, misread, or weaponized, and they often outlast the circumstances that produced them. The quote also gestures toward the asymmetry between speech and publication: speech can be revised, clarified, or forgotten, but print fixes a version that others may treat as definitive. In a media-saturated culture, Burnett’s observation reads as a caution about public statements and memoir: publication can transform private experience into a public artifact with consequences the author cannot fully predict.