One of the fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure

Great companies are defined by their discipline and their understanding of who they are and who they are not.

If Vancouver did not succeed as Starbucks from '87 on, our entire international business, which is now thousands of stores and a significant amount of growth and profit, may not have existed.

The growth of the company and the license that Starbucks has is to participate in other food and beverage opportunities. We have a global business... and in many parts of the world, tea is much, much bigger than coffee, and we're going to bring tea and bring our capability and our understanding of what we've done for coffee to tea.

We can't wait for Washington. Business leaders are going to have to galvanize their own constituencies and do everything they can to demonstrate confidence in the economy, and I think that can be contagious.

I grew up in a working class family where there was no health insurance. I saw first hand the fracturing of the American dream and the bitterness that comes when there is no hope and a lot of despair. So I wanted to build the company, in a sense, that my father never got a chance to work for.

The leaders in Washington have got to come together in a bipartisan way and do the right thing for the people who are being left behind. We cannot have an America that is only based on the wealthy.