Post-9/11, we saw an immediate uptick in the amount of people in our stores, all over the country. People wanted that human connection. We are not going to fracture the Starbucks experience.

While we are a coffee company at heart, Starbucks provides much more than the best cup of coffee—we offer a community gathering place where people come together to connect and discover new things.

In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity or you can pick yourself up and say listen, I have to be responsible for myself.

Starbucks represents something beyond a cup of coffee.

In anything we do, any endeavor, it's not what you do; it's why you do it

I think there is probably no better person to aspire to emulate than Steve Jobs and what he has done at Apple in terms of his leadership, his innovation, not settling for mediocrity.

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.