I can only have dinner with my girlfriends once a month instead of once a week.

I became CEO at the beginning of the hit on old economy stocks. When something like that occurs in your first six months as a CEO of a more traditional branded firm, it makes for a fast learning curve.

If you feel like it's difficult to change, you will probably have a harder time succeeding.

My parents kept the best aspects of the Asian culture, and they Americanized the family. My mother was a great example for me. She was a working mother with a good career.

A representative is free delivery; she's a personal beauty consultant. Some people want that high touch.

I can only have dinner with my girlfriends once a month instead of once a week.

I think it's critical that you feel you're working for a person who is committed to advancing your career.

No one in my family had a retail or marketing background. They were professionals. They didn't understand just what I was doing by going into retailing. After I started, though, it got into my blood. I knew this was what I wanted.

You know, you go home and you try on a new mascara, and I guess a male CEO can't do that.

Women like myself, CEOs, can pave the way for more women to get to the top.

Avon is a unique place to work; we've got family-friendly policies. We have more senior women in high-level management than any other company; 46 percent of our officers are women.

Avon invented the concept of direct marketing and direct selling beauty. And that's still very valid to us. We'll have a firm that will be around for another 114 years as strongly as it was the first 114.

Since I'm a mother and a wife, I have to have passion or the frustration would win out. But I love managing people. The product is second to managing the people. And marketing to consumers is so challenging because it is evolving constantly.

We also never undercut representatives' prices. A representative will always be able to sell the discounts in our core business, which are not offered at retail. So it's never more advantageous to buy there.

China is going to be one of Avon's largest market opportunities. It has a large geographic expanse, with hundreds of thousands of women in small villages really striving to make an earnings opportunity for themselves.

I feel like I'm part of history being made. I leave Apple board meetings thinking, 'I've got to do a better job.'

I think the economic empowerment of women that has been growing over the past decade is at the 'inflection point' with this global recession. Women are, we believe, the solution for their families in their ability to go out and increase household income.

It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don't have to start with anything.

President Obama's 100-day plan is pretty impressive. I think it's a Wow 100-plus days. The administration is not operating from fear, it is trying to drive change for the future, and that's a good thing.

Talent is the No. 1 priority for a CEO. You think it's about vision and strategy, but you have to get the right people first.

The game in beauty is changing so much, if your product isn't high tech or can't make a unique performance claim - plump your lips, reduce your lines, look glossy, and stay on for 24 hours - you can't go to market today. I'm not just talking about a $20 lipstick, but a $5 lipstick!

There are pros and cons of experience. A con is that you can't look at the business with a fresh pair of eyes and as objectively as if you were a new CEO. Fire yourself on a Friday night and come in on Monday morning as if a search firm put you there as a turn-around leader. Can you be objective and make the bold change?

There's obviously a correlation between an economically empowered woman and the investments she makes. That leads to her social and moral conscience for bettering her community.

When a woman earns a dollar, the payback is higher. She'll invest in her children, in their education, health care, and basic needs. The impact of a woman's role in the economy benefits society at large.

Women are clearly the major consumers in far more than just female categories. It doesn't matter whether it is purchases of cars, cosmetics, or even products for men, female consumption power is the leading consumption power in the world. Any company that overlooks the woman as the decision maker is making a huge mistake.

Follow your compass not your clock.

We're getting ready to take over the world. My group of girlfriends - we're renegades.

I have 20,000 girlfriends, all around the world.

I'll just be sitting down having dinner with girlfriends or something and people come up and ruin the dinner.

It's weird, I never wish anything bad upon anybody, except two or three old girlfriends.

The only people you can really share certain things with in secret are your girlfriends.

I think it's quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I'm Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.

I love making music and I'm falling in love with making records, so it's like having two girlfriends. But I can handle it.

You know when I feel inwardly beautiful? When I am with my girlfriends and we are having a 'goddess circle'.

I used to try to draw my girlfriends. I think one of the most romantic things that anybody can do is draw a portrait of the person you love.

It's funny, my girlfriends think that because I am married to a fashion designer, I get all these great tips and hints about great fashion, but it's not like that at all. He never tells me what to wear.

As hard as it is and as tired as I am, I force myself to get dinner at least once a week with my girlfriends, or have a sleepover. Otherwise my life is just work.

I can only have dinner with my girlfriends once a month instead of once a week.

Directors are never in short supply of girlfriends.

Music is like girlfriends to me; I'm continually astonished by the choices other people make.

I get along with guys; most of my friends are guys. It's easier to trust men sometimes. I only have a few close girlfriends that I trust.

If you don't have a valentine, hang out with your girlfriends, don't go looking for someone. When it's right, they'll come to you.

I like to do little obsessed losers, or people who are in over their head, or people who are trying to figure stuff out, or guys whose girlfriends leave them and they don't quite get it. Guys who just don't quite get it.

Men are different. When they are in love they may also have other girlfriends.

One report said that since my time on the run I've had 2,500 girlfriends. I mean you got to realize, I've been on the run for more than 30 years, I have got to have had more than that!

I am a hopeless romantic and I love to spoil my girlfriends.

I suppose I was a little bit of what would be called today a nerd. I didn't have girlfriends, and really I wasn't a very social boy.

Thank God I never got in a fight. All of the jock dudes hated me, but all of their girlfriends thought I was nice so they wouldn't touch me. It was infuriating to them.

If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.