We don't want to give a business that is not going to come through the troubled waters a loan that they can't pay back.

Small businesses, you can give them capital, but what they often need as much is mentoring, advice and help with their business plan.

Small businesses are really the engine in the economy.

The morale when I came in was not the best. It was because the agency had not been valued.

Small businesses want things streamlined, and one of the great successes we're having is less paperwork, faster turnaround times.

Small businesses have told us that having cash in their pocket is one of the primary things that they need.

One of the most important things we hear is the S.B.A. needs to be ubiquitous. We do all these things, but people still don't know.

I saw the S.B.A. with just enormous potential, and that's what I told the president - this is really a jewel.

Health care is the No. 1 concern of small businesses and the status quo is untenable.

President Obama vowed in his State of the Union address to make assisting domestic manufacturers a top priority for his second term.

In October 2008, when the credit crunch hit, small businesses were really crushed by the lack of capital.

Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods – they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.

When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

What's bred in the bone will stick to the flesh.

Fine music without devotion is but a splendid garment upon a corpse.

Pornographers subvert this last, vital privacy; they do our imagining for us. They take away the words that were of the night and shout them over the roof-tops, making them hollow.

I have a really big interest in the spirit world: spooks and the things we can't necessarily see but feel.

Love may be blind, but if you've ever known a blind person, they still know where everything is.

I open each class with an explanation of the singular importance of being a "dealmaker." The manifesto of the dealmaker is simple: Reality is negotiable.