Work should be personal. For all of us. Not just for the artist and entrepreneur. Work should have meaning for the accountant, the construction worker, the technologist, the manager and the clerk.

We woke up one day, and all the sudden Starbucks was in the middle of this political crossfire between the people who want to bring a gun into Starbucks and the people who want to prevent it. It is a very difficult, fragile situation.

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.

Customers don't always know what they want. The decline in coffee-drinking was due to the fact that most of the coffee people bought was stale and they weren't enjoying it. Once they tasted ours and experienced what we call "the third place" ... a gathering place between home and work where they were treated with respect.. they found we were filling a need they didn't know they had.

In the 1960s, if you introduced a new product to America, 90% of the people who viewed it for the first time believed in the corporate promise. Then 40 years later if you performed the same exercise, less than 10% of the public believed it was true. The fracturing of trust is based on the fact that the consumer has been let down.

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

I never wanted to be on any billionaires list. I never define myself by net worth. I always try to define myself by my values.