“I hadn’t learned to read by third grade, which wasn’t unusual for some kids. I knew something was wrong because I couldn’t see or understand the words the way the other kids did. I wasn’t the least bit bothered – until I was sent back to the second-grade classroom for reading help after school.”

Empathy for the people you’re working with and being aware of their needs…that’s the “big kahuna” in managing people.

Sex appeal is in the workplace every day of the week. I’m not saying that’s the only calling card, but it’s a whole crayon box.

Finding opportunity is a matter of believing it’s there.

If you want to have a creative culture, you can’t get it by reading books. You get it by example.

If a house is priced appropriately, make a bid 10 percent below that amount.

A complainer is like a Death Eater because there’s a suction of negative energy. You can catch a great attitude from great people.

Taking chances almost always makes for happy endings.

Stop putting it off! Procrastination breeds guilt, guilt breeds depression, and depression breeds failure.

It’s rumored that doing well in real estate is to be able to close a deal. I did not find that to be the case for myself, I was probably the worst closer out there and I didn’t find that was true of my top super stars either.

Confidence is overrated. It’s when we’re uncomfortable and looking for answers that we learn and grow the most.

I sat down and collected all of our eleven sales for the past six months and I added them all together and divided by eleven. I then took that average and presented it as the average price for a Manhattan apartment. The media ate it up.

Don’t you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct.

My mother’s genius was to put her finger on the gifts she saw in each of us, and make every one of us believe that that gift was uniquely ours.

I gave up years ago on the concept that you could actually have balance in your life, I think it’s a phantom chase.

If you’re having fun, you wind up innovating.

I think of my business and investments as extension of my family.

In my day, we didn’t have the cocaine, so we went out and knocked somebody over the head and took the money. But today, all this cocaine and crack, it doesn’t give kids a chance.

I work, and then I leave the office, and I’m with my kids and just sort of enjoy them on a visceral level, and I don’t feel like I’m exorcising my own deep ideas about parenthood and about how my life will come into play in my work.

At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the school for two years.

The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks.

Since I was 8 months old, till I was 12, I did commercials and ads and cute little stuff for kids. Then I had braces on my teeth. They took them off when I was 16, and then I started modeling more seriously and doing more fashion.

You know, when I did ‘American Idol’ the three times, I tried to tell these kids you have to tell the story of the lyric.

I’m partly somebody else trying to fit in and say the right things and do the right thing and be in the right place and wear what everybody else is wearing.

I was this kid who never sat down. Nobody liked me? Well, I’d make sure they’d like me. I was the class clown, always doing crazy stuff and causing riots.