Joseph Roth Quotations

We've already received such a warm reception from customers in Michigan. Just as we have customers who are excited about Ikea, we have lots of potential employees who are excited as well.

We go where the location works for our customers and our store operations. We were not lured. We go where the location is attractive. If we wanted to go to places where things were free, we would be somewhere else. . . . If we can secure some assistance from a local municipality, we are always welcome to it, but it does not determine where within the market we go.

We're excited to be coming to the Detroit area.

One of the things Ikea is known for is having a very low turnover for the merchandising industry, and having the great benefits that we offer, allowing co-workers to have flexible schedules.

Because we have 218 stores in 33 countries ? 25 in the United States ? we have products made in the U.S. and Canada and throughout the world.

Opening stores is something we do very well and we are continuing to work with local organizations to not only handle those issues but also to help other area business to take advantage of our traffic.

We need an area with a population of at least 2 million people to support one store. For many years, we were looking for a second Chicago-area location, and we're thrilled with the opportunity in Bolingbrook.

Most of Northwest Indiana technically is within the Chicago media market.

We hope to be fully enclosed by winter and cannot wait to open Ikea Canton.

We have an obligation to our customers to provide a smooth flow in and out and an obligation to our neighbors.

You do a little, we do a little, we all save a lot.

I think it's our unique product selection and the idea that everything we sell only can be purchased at Ikea.

We're not just a unique retailer, but a unique employer.

We're such a unique retailer and our whole shopping experience is different. You have to be used to thinking differently and open to learning a different way of doing business.

We certainly recognize the potential customer base in the Denver market ... We're evaluating all major metropolitan areas around the country to see if an IKEA store is appropriate.

We are still receiving applications every day. It's wonderful. We are interviewing still.

We have everything for the home under one roof. We intend our stores to sell only our products. That contributes to our uniqueness.

Everything at Ikea is being driven by function and purpose. For us, it's much more about directing customers and providing easy access to and from the store.

This is pretty close to the earliest we've had someone show up. If it's not a record, it's certainly up there.

In North America, we only plan on opening four to five stores a year, while other chains look to open that many in one metro area in a year.

The escalator seems to me to typify this: It leads us up, by climbing on our behalf. Yes, it doesn't even climb, it flies. Each step carries its shopper aloft, as though afraid he might change his mind. It takes us up to merchandise we might not have bothered to climb an ordinary flight of steps for.

That is originally why the concept evolved to include accessories. We found that furniture sells better when you show it with accessories.

A moving shadow means more to us than a body at rest. We are no longer taken in by a fixed grin. We know that only death has a rictus.

Although the noise of the chattering clientele is much more significant than the topics of their chatter, it does finally constitute that type of social and indistinct expression that we refer to as rhubarb. The very particular volume in which people tell each other their news seems to generate all by itself that acoustic chiaroscuro, a sounding murk, in which every communication seems to lose its edges, truth projects the shadow of a lie, and a statement seems to resemble its opposite.

I am not an encore, not a pudding, I am the main dish.

There is a fear of voluptuousness that is itself voluptuous, just as a certain fear of death can itself be deadly.

Anyway, I am unfitted to hold down a job anywhere unless they were to pay me for getting angry at the world." 96

A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about.

I believe that my observations have always led me to find that the so-called realist moves about the world with a closed mind, ringed as it were with concrete and cement, and that the so-called romantic is like an unfenced garden in and out of which truth can wander at will.

That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.

Only the small things in life are important