Sublime

a respect for real adventure (defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive—and certainly not as the same person); a taste for real adventure; and a belief that less is more (in design and in consumption).

At the time of publication of this book, a notch over 50 percent of our employees have been here for five years or more. That’s rarefied air in an industry where the average tenure at the top tech companies is less than two years.

Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over drafts and blue-prints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?

These companies offer more than a shopping destination. They’ve created, at breathtaking speeds, the kinds of long-lasting customer relationships that define great brands.

Claire Pennoyer Chouinard high up in a merlin’s nest, Cascapedia River, Quebec,

“Make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must be experimentation of several generations of craftsmen.