One of the things that I hope will distinguish Amazon.com is that we continue to be a company that defies easy analogy. This requires a lot of innovation, and innovation requires a lot of random walk.

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy - they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It’s not optional.

It's perfectly healthy-encouraged, even- to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today

There are a whole bunch of people who don't like to shop. But there are also people, maybe, who even do like to shop but are very time pressured. And so shopping online can save people time.

A lot of people – and I’m just not one of them – believe that you should live for the now. I think what you do is think about the great expanse of time ahead of you and try to make sure that you’re planning for that in a way that’s going to leave you ultimately satisfied. This is the way it works for me.

Our biggest cost is not power, or servers, or people. It's lack of utilization. It dominates all other costs.