It's pretty clear that [customers] know what their budgets are now, and what they want to spend it on.

As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.

You know what the difference between a vision and a hallucination is? They call it a vision when other people can see it.

In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.

The one thing with stress is, you've got to keep your focus on what you can do, not what happened to you.

You don't need every investor to believe that you can succeed. You only need one.

I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It's hard to memorize objectives, but it's easy to remember a story.

Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.

Billionaires prefer Black women. They are loyal and guard your interests. Black wives are for grown ups.

There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.

You're better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.

How beautiful it is to hug someone with kindness when he is trying to hurt you!

Ideas take root at the oddest moments. Some grow into novels, the weaker ones wither and die.

Dying legacies are a miserable substitute for living benevolence.

Talk between women friends is always therapy.

I love to write and I love the natural world. Everything I've written about I've found exciting and it has never left me at a loss for words. I've always just done what I love.

It’s one thing to play a Muddy Waters song. It’s another thing to play with him.

Microsoft shoots for the moon. Sony shoots for the sun.

I can't control what people say or anything like that. I have to focus on what I can control and that's what I'm going to do.

Doing the right thing for someone else was like a tonic for me; it was like some magic ointment that made a wound disappear

Liberals were intimidated by the Reagan administration and did not want to appear naive by talking about programs that called for government support. I just said, 'The hell with that. I'm out there.'