“For good or for bad, we define ourselves in many ways by the gadgets we use and the clothes we wear. We don't want to surround ourselves with cheap products. Nobody really aspires to that. We also don't want to pay for a diamond-encrusted ereader. We don't need bling; we just need to feel like the design speaks to us.”

“Digital books are in some ways hastening the lazy, solipsistic narcissism of our culture. We use our gadgets as proxies for other people and genuine human interaction. And yes, I think that's bad.”

“Just as we are what we eat, we are what we read.”

“You and I both worry about what it means to put our personal libraries onto one gadget and then what would happen if we dropped it in the bathtub...”

“But ebooks will rule the day, and when people a few years from now talk about 'books', what they'll really be referring to are ebooks, not print books. Eventually the 'e' will be dropped, and books will be assumed to be digital, just as most music is now digital; after all, we don't refer to music as e-music.”

“Ours is a culture that dances on the edge of ephemerality. If our servers slept for too long or if we left our iPads unplugged for too long, we'd wake up like Rip Van Winkle to find all of our book culture erased.”

“Dedicated ereaders are as sharp as steak knives in doing what they're supposed to do, which is let you read books. The iPad is more like a Swiss Army knife -- it can cut the steak and uncork a wine bottle, and there's even a toothpick to use when you're done eating! It's got it all.”