Theodor Adorno delightfully likens punctuation marks to friendly spirits:
[I]nstead of diligently serving the interplay between language and the reader, they serve, hieroglyphically, an interplay that takes place in the interior of language, along its own pathways. Hence it is superfluous to omit them as being superfluous: then they simply hide. Every text, even the most densely woven, cites them of its own accord—friendly spirits whose bodiless presence nourishes the body of language. (
The Antioch Review, Summer, 1990)