“The second thing that I struck me was that people are not, contrary to popular belief, rude. Not in the slightest. In fact, most of them are exceptionally polite. What they are, however – and what is, I think, mistaken by many as rudeness – is busy. So busy you almost feel sorry for them. So busy that you wish Brita would start putting Valium in their filters.”

“Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.”

“If you want to preach, young man, you ought to wear some kind of clerical costume so people would be warned. In my mind, there are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them. I hate le misérabilisme. I’m in the shining business, not the darkening business.”

“I hear Raleigh's new accounting business isn't doing well. Maybe up in New York or somewhere it's a good thing, but in Jackson, Mississippi, people just don't care to do business with a rude, condescending asshole.”

“All the emails I get these days start with sorry but I've been so busy, and I don't understand how we can be so busy and then have nothing to say to each other.”

“But when friends would ask Kathy whether they, too, should start their own business, she talked them out of it. You don’t run the business, she would say. The business runs you.”