I KNEW THOSE ANALYSTS WERE ON THE PAYROLL

“The general takeaway from our moonlighting is that Amazon is executing on its near-term and long-term financial and operating goals.”

CSFB analyst Jamie Kiggen, who supplemented his annual bonus with some holiday work in an Amazon.com warehouse, CNNfn, 8 December 2000

WE WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE MONEY AND RUN

“If we had known then that we’d never be able to raise another dollar for Garden.com until we achieved profitability, would we have made different decisions? Of course.”

Garden.com CEO Cliff Sharples, exercising hindsight on running a company without foresight,

SHORT-TERM THINKING FOR THE LONG TERM

“While we continue to manage through the market transition, we believe the long-term e-business opportunity is very attractive.”

Scient CEO Bob Howe, on the e-business consultancy’s layoff of a quarter of its staff, News.com, 6 December 2000

I’LL BE MAC

“We have an Arnold Schwarzenegger balance sheet, with more than $4 billion in cash. There’s no question that Apple can weather this quarter.”

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who must be itching to rethink that whole “interim” thing after announcing that the once-again troubled computer maker is going to miss its estimates by $600 million this quarter, ZDNet, 5 December 2000

I SPUN IT MY WAY

“I have to speak for myself. I would actually lose the credibility that interests HP if I did not conduct myself that way.”

Newly hired Hewlett-Packard employee Bruce Perens, on his new role as head flack for HP’s Linux initiatives, News.com, 4 December 2000