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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Why would I need to call that number up from memory? Do you memorize all the page numbers of your favorite passages?
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Not I: my memory is terrible. But I actually think there are people who do have the page numbers of notable passages memorized. I remember my Kant professor in grad school. You'd ask him about something, and he'd instantly open his copy of the First Critique to where Kant said something relevant. Very impressive. :-) I don't know if he had the page numbers memorized, but it wouldn't particularly surprise me. You work with an important book enough, and things stick in your head, at least if you have a better memory for numbers than I do. Compare how a lot of people have bible verse numbers memorized for many significant verses.
My feeling is that there is a divide between the needs of casual readers who tend to proceed linearly through a text and serious students of a text. Of course, there are way more of the former, so it makes sense for the Kindle to be optimized for them.
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I'd look them up (using bookmarks and highlights) and pass the number(s) along to my friend. No memorization required. 
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First, that presupposes that the friend has an ebook reader. Second, absent more standardization than we have, it presupposes that the friend's ebook reader app is of the same brand. Third, the fewer digits there are, the less chance of scrambling in oral transmission. Fourth, there is a good chance one at least has to put the number in short term memory for a few seconds as one tells one's friend what the number is.
Of course, page numbers aren't perfect, either, since they may be tied to a different edition of the book than one has (though one may be able to order a different edition through interlibrary loan).