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.

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.

Twice a week I would receive injections or IV's of Factor VIII which clotted the blood and then broke it down.

Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy.

Keep your blood clean, your body lean, and your mind sharp.

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.

I had no blood relatives till I made some.

I know that I'm very lucky to be alive. For 35 or 40 years I've spilt my blood and broke my bones and spent years in hospitals.

Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one.

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.

Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don't really think it is.

I say to you that the price of liberty is and always has been blood, human blood, and if our liberties are lost, we shall never regain them except at the price of blood. They must not be lost.

Once blood is shed in a national quarrel reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men.

I would give up everything rather than have the blood of white men upon the hands of my people.

I don't need power at the cost of spilled blood.

There are two times of the year that stir the blood. In the fall, for the hunt, and now for lacrosse.

It has been said that the position of woman is the test of civilization, and that of our women was secure. In them was vested our standard of morals and the purity of our blood.

It consists entirely of people who are not related by blood, many of whom can't stand each other.

Basketball is in my blood. It is my obligation to try.

The masses don't shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals.

Blood and death. That moves me.

It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.

Each of us needs something - food, liquor, pot, whatever - to help us survive. Dracula needs blood.