As a little girl growing up in Southside Jamaica Queens, if anyone would've told me I'd have my own perfume one day, and be able to inspire young black girls everywhere, to go into Macy's or Nordstrom's and see their face staring back at them - I wouldn't believe them.

It's not hard to get your way when it's your way or the highway. People either follow suit or they're not around. I don't really like the sound of that, 'cause that sounds like a temper tantrum. I'm just very black and white when it comes to my business. There's really no gray area.

I happen to be a pessimist, and maybe that's a good thing because I don't stop to smell the roses - which is not a good personal thing. I don't stop and enjoy those moments... Always on to the next and never in the moment.

Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.

Who we are cannot be separated from where we're from.

Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.

It's not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful.

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.

In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

...If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)

Achievement is talent plus preparation

Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

..... it would be interesting to find out what goes on in that moment when someone looks at you and draws all sorts of conclusions.

No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.

To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.

Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.

In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.

Emotion is contagious.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. (150)

We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.

If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.

Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions . . . by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.

When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.

Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation

My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.

There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.

Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.

We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.

Arousal leaves us mind-blind.

It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.

Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.

There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.

We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.

A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.

The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.

The 10,000hr rule is a definite key in success

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.

Working really hard is what successful people do...

Being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience

You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.

We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn't happen.

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!

You can’t concentrate on doing anything if you are thinking, “What’s gonna happen if it doesn’t go right?