Customers have different need states and life experiences.

Every step of the way, I made a point to underpromise and overdeliver. In the long run, that's the only way to ensure security in any job.

Everyone must have a shot at the American Dream.

It's ironic that no matter where I go, I meet people from Brooklyn. I'm proud of that heritage. It's where I'm from, who I am.

When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America - a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee.

Success in the United States is not an entitlement in China. You have to go there and earn it, and earn it the right way.

If you put on a lousy production with white actors, it's lousy. There is a problem, or can be, at this stage of our social evolution, with mixing the casts. It may not be a question of race so much as class. You would rarely find a black man in a high executive position where he was swinging his weight around.