“I didn't think he was a very 'nice' person,' says Chichilnisky [about Jeff Bezos]. 'I liked him, but he was not warm. I'm not criticising him, not a bit. It was like he could be a Martian for all I knew. A well-meaning, nice Martian.”

“I'd disagree with the characterisations of him as competitive (which I think was just misinterpretation of his ambition) or secretive (which I think is more about wanting to protect his team and his customers). Jeff [Bezos] could much more accurately be described as a naively optimistic geek than a calculating megalomaniac.”

“Perhaps it is his goofy laugh and silly grin that made people underestimate him; certainly his playfulness contributed to that perception. At their wedding reception, Jeff [Bezos] and MacKenzie provided an outdoor adult play area that included water balloons.”

“... Bezos personifies a new breed of executive that arose with the emergence of the game-changing technologies in the 1980s and 1990s ... a 'productive narcissist'. ... These executives have big enough egos to make up seemingly random rules of business leadership. However, unlike other narcissists, they get the job done.”

“His goal (Bezos's)was not just to make browsing for books easy, but an enjoyable experience. “People don’t just buy books because they need books,” he has said. “There are products like that. Pharmaceuticals are that way. Nobody enjoys browsing the Preparation H counter. But people will gladly spend hours in a bookstore, so you have to make the shopping experience fun and engaging.”

“... working at Amazon was not just a job - it was part of a visionary quest, something to give higher meaning to their lives.”

“... physical bookstores will become ever-nicer places to be. They are going to have more sofas, better lattes, nicer people working there. Good bookstores are the community centres of the 20th century.”