Ink is a generative fluid. If you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all; the only tip you can give to a prospective writer is “try to mean what you say.” We feel protected when we write on a screen, but (as with the magic slate) we can be fooled. Erasure seems simple—blink and it’s gone, overwrite the line. But nothing ever really goes away. The internet keeps regurgitating you. You can’t bury or burn your traces.

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 59