Define a winning proposition that is consumer right and delivers margin accretion.

Looks do count. Deliver visually stunning merchandising. Engage at the point of sale. Help consumers shop with their eyes.

Our most exciting discoveries come from studying anomalies. The once-in-1000 occurrence is worth getting detail on.

Functional goods sold en masse earn a good return but breakthrough profits come from satisfying emotional needs.

I admire many entrepreneurs. They bring energy, excitement, youthful enthusiasm. What they lack in process, they make up for in gumption.

Respond to your customer's dissatisfactions with precision and power.

The Golden Rule works. It really does. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Kindness begets kindness.

Curiosity is the greatest source of ideas, retail revolutions, and insights.

All companies have many opportunities. Strategy is about allocation of resources and priorities.

Completely understand the customer by seeking an intense, complete and empathetic understanding.

Don't ask your customers what they want. This rule is based on the view that they probably don't know. You have to fully understand them, the context for their needs and their major dissatisfactions.

Social distance makes it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our own.

Romantic relationships are the least interesting thing for me to write about. I'm 45, and that's not the most interesting thing in my life anymore.

I laugh at weird times - at good and bad things alike. I laugh simply when things are incongruous. It's not necessarily a judgment - as it is noticing the oddity of something.

He divines remedies against injuries; he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage; whatever does not kill him makes him stronger

The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.

I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers.

I make myself suffer with a lot of self doubt.

It does not matter a feather whether a man be supported by patron or client, if he himself wants courage. [Lat., Animus tamen omnia vincit. Ille etiam vires corpus habere facit.]

Poverty snatches the reins out of the hand of piety.

If we don't have a more serious energy policy, the difference between a good day and bad day for America from here on will hinge on how the 86-year-old king of Saudi Arabia manages...change.