Bezos: "I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."

Bezos: "Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful."

Bezos: "If you don't understand the details of your business you are going to fail."

Bezos: "We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient."

Bezos: "It's not an experiment if you know it's going to work."

Bezos: "The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works."

Bezos: "A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last."

Bezos: "Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital."

Bezos: "I don't want to use my creative energy on somebody else's user interface."

Bezos: "Percentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that."

Bezos: "I think that, ah, I'm a very goofy sort of person in many ways."

Bezos: "You don't want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day."

Bezos: "What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you - what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind - you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy."

Bezos: "The special ops guys and the firefighters around the world have this great phrase. They say, 'Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,' and that is true. Everything I've accomplished in my life has been because of that attitude."

Bezos: "A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well."

Bezos: "The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author's world."

Bezos: "We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business."

Bezos: "We are an appropriate company only for long-term-oriented investors."

Bezos: "I'd rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person."

Bezos: "I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate."

Bezos: "We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better."

Bezos: "The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine."

Bezos: "As Warren Buffett says [if you take] a long-term approach ... you get the shareholders you deserve."

Bezos: "What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives."

Bezos: "The common question that gets asked in business is, 'why?' That's a good question, but an equally valid question is, 'why not?'"

Bezos: "There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second."

Bezos: "I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be."

Bezos: "If you can't tolerate critics, don't do anything new or interesting."