“It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book... it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt...”

“(in response to the question: what do you think of e-books and Amazon’s Kindle?)Those aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry.”

“"It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books.”

“..holding a book but reading the empty spaces.”

“There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.”

“We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy. Something is missing...It is not books you need, it's some of the things that are in books. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

“I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.”