We live in a digital age, yet sales of good old fashioned paper are way up. Why? An article in the Guardian provides quite a good answer:

We all love stationery (some more moderately and tastefully than others). But why? It seems to me to offer two great and seductive promises. The first is that it will unleash your creative potential. The unsullied page, the pristine pen offer limitless possibilities (also, on a bad day, unlimited fear). “My grey goose quill,” wrote Byron, “Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will/Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen/That mighty instrument of little men.” And look how well he got on. Imagine what he would have been able to do with a Mont Blanc and special-edition Moleskine.

The right pen and the right paper brought into conjunction, runs the unspoken thought, cannot help but result in a sudden influx of bold, brilliant and original ideas, the germ of a bestselling novel that will in its turn be inscribed in another, perhaps larger notebook more worthy of the task, in sentences as creamy and beautiful as the pages on which they are written. I am always on the hunt for the perfect notebook. Muji (the brown paperbacked ones), Field Notes (the three-packs), the ubiquitous Moleskine and, in more whimsical moments, Cavallini & Co have all come close. Which is to say, close to being the one that will become the perfect commonplace book, in which I will continue that proud Renaissance tradition of recording useful quotations, inspiring stories and intriguing snippets, but which will eventually, in a surprising modern twist and via a complicated but plausible chain of events involving bestsellerdom, successful film adaptation and a meeting of minds with the star during an on-set visit, end in a long and happy marriage to Jake Gyllenhaal. Is it any wonder I keep buying, when only an unlined leather notebook stands between me and all this?

Read more at Why I love stationery | Life and style | The Guardian.