I get up in the morning do my e-mail I check my e-mails all day. I'll go online and I'll buy my books at Amazon.com but I don't want to buy all of them because I want to go to Duttons and I want to buy books from another human being.

I'm not itching to sue Amazon or Wal-Mart... they sell a lot of books. But the future is very uncertain with books.

With paper printed books you have certain freedoms. You can acquire the book anonymously by paying cash which is the way I always buy books. I never use a credit card. I don't identify to any database when I buy books. Amazon takes away that freedom.

Writers now are putting total faith in designers at Apple and Amazon. It's almost like a race-car driver having no input into how cars are designed.

I've drunk Amazon's free Diet Coke. Nothing makes more sense to me than a company trying to make bookselling into a profitable business. I'm not anti-Amazon and I'm not pro-publishers either. I'm pro-books.

Perhaps the single most dramatic example of this phenomenon of software eating a traditional business is the suicide of Borders and corresponding rise of Amazon.