It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you're in boom times.

I've not seen an effective manager or leader who can't spend some fraction of time down in the trenches... If they don't do that they get out of touch with reality, and their whole thought and management process becomes abstract and disconnected.

The Internet is disrupting every media industry...people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling.

I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

You have to use your judgment. In cases like that, we say, 'let's be simple minded. We know this is a feature that's good for customers. Let's do it.

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts

What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.