On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.

When [competitors are] in the shower in the morning, they're thinking about how they're going to get ahead of one of their top competitors. Here in the shower, we're thinking about how we are going to invent something on behalf of a customer.

I never worked on the school newspaper.

The death knell for any enterprise is to glorify the past -- no matter how good it was.

If we think long term, we can accomplish things that we couldn't otherwise accomplish.

If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.

You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three.