Stand in my lobby at 5:30 P.M., and there is no one who gets out of the lift who is not on a gadget. No one is talking to each other. I get in the lift and say, 'Hello,' and everyone's head is down tapping on a screen.
— Philip Green
I think I've got a good feel. A feel for... being able to walk with different people. Or for being able to look at people and think, 'Yeah, I might know what they want to wear.'
I was never going to be a scholar.
I sometimes think less is more. If you cut yourself in too many places, it is hard to execute.
On what possible basis would I want to stop someone from buying BHS if I had tried to save it?
Arcadia was a typical venture capital deal, but I'm the adventurer and the capitalist.
There is no reason why government should not be as efficient as any good business.
If I say I'm going to do something, I do it.
People are always going to go shopping. A lot of our effort is just: 'How do we make the retail experience a great one?'
Good, bad or indifferent, if you are not investing in new technology, you are going to be left behind.
I think I pick more winners than losers.
I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it's not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work.
I don't think there's anyone who can be unaware of the relevance of Kate Moss, the effect that she's had on the fashion industry.
When I've had a talk with someone, I like them to leave unconfused. No need for contention.
I could spend my life having meetings, a meeting to have another meeting, a hundred meetings to have another thousand meetings. It's not what I'm about. I don't want to have to get in a queue; that's not how I like to live.
If you go 90 yards in a hundred-yard race, you come last. Usain Bolt slows down for the last half a yard, but for 99 yards, he is that far ahead that he can. In our business, you can't be far enough ahead. It is such a competitive marketplace.
Nobody can be a clairvoyant.
I used to leave my house at 6:30 in the morning, and I would visit 10 shops every Saturday, starting at the furthest shop I'd decided to go to that day, ending up in Oxford Street 12 hours later.
I hope and believe all the people that worked very closely with me at BHS for all those years, and some for the whole journey, will know it was never my intention for the business to have the ending it did.
I have a very clear conscience.
They already know all about brands... but what 16- and 17-year-olds won't necessarily have is experience of the world of work. The more that businesses get involved with schools, the better, because businesses sometimes complain that students don't have what they require to succeed in work.
I don't like department stores. I had a chain of department stores back in 1994 which was Lewis's and Owen Owen, only for a short time, and I found department stores personally difficult.
You've got to love what you do to really make things happen.
I am brave, but I take a view. It is an educated view. I am careful. I am not reckless.
I think everybody, from every end of the market place, from young through to old, wants to be fashionable. Everybody. Women want to feel like they're wearing the right merchandise, regardless of age. They want to be trendy.
I am a positive thinker. You have to have this positive energy to get somewhere.
When I am driving my car down the street, I try not to go down the potholes.
It is about attention to detail and then the minutest detail on top of that. I am an owner, and yet I'll argue about the sign on the wall.
I don't regret anything I haven't done.
I wasn't a good school pupil. I was interested in business.
You're going to find England, unfortunately, is a place where you get a lot of jealous, envious, you know, negative people. That's how it is.
It's not my style to blame anybody else.
You are forced to have the best data capture, the best information, when you have goods in hundreds of factories around the world, and the question is: 'Where is everything?' And how do you bring it all together?
I'm in the retail business, not the circus business.
It's all about quality of life and finding a happy balance between work and friends and family.
