"If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up."

"Some may never live, but the crazy never die."

"The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

"Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously."

"So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?"

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

"A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance."

"When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America - a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee."

"My son is trying to be a sports writer, and my daughter is a college student. She wants to be a comedy writer, and she's at film school. I discouraged both of them early on from getting involved in Starbucks. I didn't think it would be fair; plus, they didn't have any interest anyway."

"The growth of the company and the license that Starbucks has is to participate in other food and beverage opportunities. We have a global business... and in many parts of the world, tea is much, much bigger than coffee, and we're going to bring tea and bring our capability and our understanding of what we've done for coffee to tea."

"I've traveled around the world, and what's so revealing is that, despite the differences in culture, politics, language, how people dress, there is a universal feeling that we all want the same thing. We deeply want to be respected and appreciated for our differences."

"Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program."

"What I would say to young entrepreneurs is there's so many moments in your life where you have these dreams, and people are trying to protect you, and they say, perhaps, friends, family, parents sometimes, they don't agree with it, they think, 'This is just too high of a hurdle.' And I don't agree with that."

"My father had a series of blue-collar jobs and never made more than $20,000 a year. When I was seven, he got injured on a job. That was a very important point - because of the injury, he couldn't walk, and the company he was working for did not pay him. There was no compensation. So there was no money and no food."

"I probably have about four or five cups of coffee a day. I make myself an espresso macchiato when I wake, which is a shot of espresso and just a dollop of steamed milk. Then, if I'm going to do some work at home, I would make myself a French press. It's the best way to make conventional coffee."

"In many places where coffee is grown, deforestation is a major issue. With Starbucks' position in the marketplace and the respect and relationships we have, we can - and have, in some cases - been able to educate and influence people."

"If you look at coffee, tea, food and juice, we think there are inherent opportunities. If you look at health bars or grab-and-go products that are in our stores, we think we can significantly enhance them and make them more widely available."

"I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It's seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It's seeing what other people don't see And pursuing that vision."

"I tried to build a company my father would have been proud to work for, that he would have looked back on and said, 'That's the company that honoured me, even though I don't have an education'. I wanted to build a company that had a conscience."

"We woke up one day, and all the sudden Starbucks was in the middle of this political crossfire between the people who want to bring a gun into Starbucks and the people who want to prevent it. It is a very difficult, fragile situation."

"Many companies today are reducing hours of full-time people to get under the minimum so they don't have to pay health care costs. I just shake my head because that's not going to build long-term value and trust with your people."

"I think people will walk into the Starbucks store and overnight recognize the significant difference between what Starbucks represents day-in and day-out and all the other coffee companies that have been serving coffee in India for so many years."

"I am concerned about any attrition in customer traffic at Starbucks, but I don't want to use the economy, commodity prices or consumer confidence as an excuse. We must maintain a value proposition to our customers as well as differentiate the Starbucks Experience. That is the key."

"On balance, I am a supporter of the minimum wage going up. We've got to be very careful what we wish for because some employers - and there could be a lot of them - will be scared away from hiring new people or creating incremental hours for part-time people as a result of that wage going up."