(a bit odd because from a scifi novel, but...)
"I know you can learn to read."
"But what if I can't?"
"If it'll make you feel better, you don't have to. You can learn a few key words, a few symbols. Few people choose to read these days. They watch the trid and the flat for news and entertainment. They use icon and voice-based computers to move data around for their employers. Programmers are literate in the comp language, but not much else. The only people who have to worry about reading are the ones that make it all work. They have to know how to read to keep things going, to improve the tech. But it's rare. You can get by without reading if you want. You'll learn a few words, like STOP, and you'll see them just like icons, and that'll be that."
      So basically the author was getting that maybe there isn't a sharp black and white distinction between literatacy and illiteracy. That and more interesting ideas in Changeling, by Chris Kubasik. This novel takes basically all the things other Shadowrun novels take for granted and explores them in-depth, which makes a better straight up skiffy book, but less of a Shadowrun story in some ways. While piecing together some of those ideas for the plot, however, Kubasik strays into something of the pedantic at times. The ending is a little too pat for me, but the heavy/raw feeling at the beginning makes up for that.

Shhhh.... - just like in Deus Ex; does that vaguely creep anyone else out?

McShuarma - on that razor edge between disturbing, sad and funny. An edge can have three sides if I say it can.

-ahh, the "land tank;" I think the redundancy of that lends itself to the article

-great cause, kid, but now I have to fear for my life if this spreads